Here at Leeds Beekeepers Association we pride ourselves on the courses we offer. This week saw our 2017 Spring New Beekeeper course start at our Temple Newsam apiary. This is a course run on Wednesday evenings during the most active period of the beekeeping season, in spring and early summer. There are 6 weekly sessions including theory behind beekeeping, and practical hands-on training. It was a beautiful sunny evening and we had 27 people on the course attend. It's great to see so many people showing an interest in beekeeping and wanting to learn more about this fascinating craft.
This week saw us and our friends at Barkston Ash Beekeepers Association, once again join forces at Countryside Learning. Countryside Learning is a country show specifically for schools, and is held yearly at the Ledston Estate near Castleford. There are lots of great activities for the children and we provide them with the opportunity to learn about bees and to see them up close in an observation hive. We also let them dress up in beekeeping suits, examine the equipment we use and taste various type of honey.
Yesterday we ran the first of our 2017 taster sessions at our Temple Newsam apiary. It was a fantastic experience and so enjoyable for the people that attended and wanted to know more about keeping bees. We love sharing our passion about beekeeping with anyone that will listen. We had 9 association beekeepers involved in delivering the sessions because we believe in a team spirit approach to keeping honey bees. The session consisted of a talk about beekeeping in Leeds, West Yorkshire followed by a demonstration of a hive inspection in small groups, around a colony of bees. If you are interested in coming along on one of our taster sessions, see the details here about the next one in August.
Several Fabre’s hives have been put up at our Temple Newsam apiary. These are solitary bee hotels named after Jean-Henri Fabre. They have been put up by Leeds University PhD Student, Jens Van Eeckhoven in the hopes of attracting Osmia bicornis and other mason bees into making their nest there. Jens writes…. “Taking care of our honeybees, we tend to forget that most bee species don’t actually live in colonies inside hives. Instead most wild bees are actually solitary [endif]--(Peters et al., 2017). Researchers are still debating exactly how the extreme group living that we see in honeybees arose. We all know that honeybee workers don’t generally lay eggs, but take care of their queen’s offspr
