“Bee Improvement for All”

A whole days learning how to improve your bees.

Bee Improvement should be of interest to all beekeepers and for a number of reasons including temper, quietness on the combs and suitability to the locality.

The queen is an important factor in the characteristics of a colony, so colony assessment and queen selection need more attention than many beekeepers give them. This does mean queen rearing, but the bees give us many opportunities during the summer to raise queens with little effort needed by us.
“Bee Improvement for all” is a one day course that is designed to help beekeepers use these opportunities to improve their bees, as well as giving information to those who wish to raise more queens. Some speakers and books don’t serve the beekeeper with a few colonies very well, as they often use methods that are beyond the needs of the ordinary beekeeper. This course is organised to help and encourage beekeepers of all abilities to improve their bees, using simple techniques without the need for specialist equipment.

Amongst the topics covered will be:

• Setting the criteria you want in your bees.
• How to assess your own and other people’s colonies.
• Recording assessments using simple methods.
• Rearing queens from local bees to avoid relying on buying them.
• Deciding which colonies to use queen cells from and which queens to cull.
• Using natural queen cells the bees build.
• “Artificial” queen rearing for those who want more queens.
• Changing queens in colonies.
• Making up mating nuclei.
• Getting queens mated.
• Working with other beekeepers and the local BKA.

There will be plenty of information on colony management, with emphasis on understanding what is happening inside colonies and keeping things simple.
This course will help beekeepers to rear their own queens from local stock and not rely on imports.
“Bee Improvement for all” courses are organised by the Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders Association (BIBBA) on a nationwide basis, sometimes in conjunction with local BKAs or bee breeding groups. They are all day events, but the timings and cost will depend on local arrangements.
Further details can be found on http://www.bibba.com or http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/beeimprovementforallday.html