Education Officer, Alan Baxter, has set up a superb teaching apiary in a private field located down a small track off Titchfield Road between Titchfield and Stubbington (PO14 3EU / ///waltzed.thundered.truck).
There are up to 10 colonies in various stages of development, plus a selection of Nucs. It is fully facilitated with ample parking, a shed, tables, chairs and a gazebo for the spring and summer months.
A colony donated to the Association by a former member is also housed at the apiary.
A series of events, workshops and training sessions is scheduled for the 2025 beekeeping season including:
- Basic Assessment Preparation
- Honey Bee Health Certificate Preparation
- Mentoring for New Beekeepers
- Catching and Dealing with Swarms
- Queen Rearing Made Simple
- Making up nucs
- Introducing new queens
- Uniting colonies
- Swarm Prevention and Control
- How to do a Health Inspection
- Varroa monitoring and treatment
- Recognising and Dealing with Problems such as drone laying queens and laying workers
- Winter preparation and how to avoid winter losses
Many of the above will be part of the routine weekly inspections and manipulations which are open to members to watch and practice themselves.
Information about forthcoming teaching sessions will be published weekly here, on the Events page and also on the FDBKA Facebook group. A dedicated WhatsApp Group can also be joined by contacting Alan via EMAIL.
Entrance Gate
Latest News: The dates for the next teaching sessions at the apiary are under review and will appear here shortly.
Alan looks forward to seeing you there!
08-06-25
Mock Basic Assessments and syllabus revision with Tim as the Assessor. Everyone ‘passed’ today so looking good for the real thing on the 22nd.
“Many thanks Tim, you gave some very good info today”, Tina
The other group did some inspections and swarm controls by splitting a colony into a double-sided Nuc. The parent colony is on brood and a half so we separated the two halves with a super and a queen excluder and left the upper half with an open charged queen cell. The aim is to experiment with a two-queen colony, a classic way of increasing honey production but not often seen nowadays. Alan will go back once the queen cell is capped and remove the super between the two brood boxes leaving just the queen excluder. Alan confesses to making this up as he goes along so the results will be interesting!
Finally we did a CO2 varroa count which produced one mite from a sample of about 300 bees which is good.
Robbing is still going on so we hope for warm sunshine to help the bramble to produce nectar.
01-06-25
Today we cleared some Supers using different methods including Canadian and Rhombus clearer bords and a fume board sprayed with BeeQuick. The Supers were replaced with brood boxes of foundation for the bees to draw out beautiful fresh frames of comb. The Supers were put into insect proof Ikea zipper bags for transporting back to the honey room. There we de-capped and extracted 30 kg of honey and tested it for moisture content with a refractometer. The honey will stay in a settling tank for 24 hours before being skimmed ready for decanting into storage buckets or straight into jars. We talked about the honey regulations concerning content and labelling, key temperatures and conditioning the honey to delay crystallisation and increase shelf life.
“Alan, thoroughly enjoyed the session today, thank you”, Kevin
“Thanks again for your wisdom and knowledge, I’m really enjoying my beekeeping journey”, JJ
25-05-25
A very windy day to inspect bees but there was a long session of routine tasks with lots achieved including finding 3 new queens, learning how to pick up a queen, CO2 testing for varroa, dealing with a rogue colony, drone brood removal, merging two colonies, looking for early warning signs of swarming, cutting out queen cells for incubation and to give one to a queen less Nuc, and more……
“Thank you Alan for another great informative day”, Claire
“Thank you Alan, informative as always”, Rick
“That was a really interesting day”, Jeri
“Absolutely fabulous day”, Neal
18-05-25
12 people attended today. The first part of the day was part 4 of the Basic Assessment preparation, learning about pests and diseases, apiary hygiene and comb change, recognising healthy bees and brood and what to look for when things aren’t well. Then some varroa monitoring and swarm prevention using comb management techniques, and simple queen rearing by making another split into a Nuc. The earlier splits were checked and queen cells broken down leaving one uncapped, charged one. The stroppy colony is now much calmer after the culling of the queen and separation into two smaller units, one of which has been united with a calm colony. The other one is also much calmer. It is now hopelessly queenless and waiting to receive a new queen from this year’s batch currently in Apidea mini mating Nucs.
“Thanks Alan, I really enjoyed myself & looking forward to the next session”, Robert
11-05-25
Another excellent day across the two sessions. The morning session saw 16 attendees split into two groups headed by Greg Young & Alan Baxter.
Also attending was Penny Melville-Brown skilfully making a skep from thatching straw.
The afternoon session was part 3 of preparation for the BBKA Basic Assessment.
Highlights of the day included:
- Sugar roll testing the varroa resistance experiment colony and observing its hygienic behaviour test,
- Learning about varroa, how it lives and breeds, and the dangers it poses for bees,
- Making a split into a nuc with the queen and what to do if you cannot find the queen,
- Finding and culling the queen in a misbehaving colony prior to requeening frommore gentile stock,
- Learning about swarming behaviour, the causes of swarming, understanding the “swarm triangle” and its importancein swarm prevention and swarm control,
- Collecting and giving swarms,
- How to merge two colonies,
- How to introduce a new queen to a colony
- Testing for queenlessness, how to recognise drone laying queens and laying workers,
- Introduction to pests and diseases with AFB, EFB, Sacbrood and Chalkbrood.
One unusual sighting today as seen by the arrow on the above photo is a white-eyed drone. The small eyes on the front of the head called ocelli have a white pigmentation probably caused by a recessive gene. Quite a rare sight but nothing to worry about.
“Fab day! Thank you”, Neal
09-05-25
Testing as area of brood for Varroa Sensitive Hygienic (VSH) behaviour in the donated colony that has not been treated for 5 years. If the bees clear out all the dead larvae quickly it’s a good sign that they have developed some resistance to the parasite.
04-05-25
Unfortunately todays session was cancelled as Alan has the dreaded lurgy! Hopefully he will have recovered in time for next weeks sessions.
29-04-25
The morning session consisted of doing a split on a colony showing the first signs of swarm preparation. We could not find the queen so we separated the flying bees from the queen, brood and nurse bees thereby breaking the “swarm triangle”. The Nuc contains a frame of egg sand very young larvae with some nurse bees to look after them, all the flying bees will return to the Nuc and it will make its own queen. The parent colony is on another stand away from the Nuc. These are good natured bees worth breeding from.
The afternoon session, for those that could not attend in the morning, was also a split for a colony readying for swarming. It was good to see the Portsmouth BKA Education Officer attend too.
“Thank you Alan for another great visit to the Teaching Apiary filling us with your great bee knowledge“, Claire.
28-04-25
I’ve always been sceptical about the 3 yards / 3 miles rule. Here’s a colony that was brought from my home apiary less than a mile away and “promoted” to a full brood box. It has settled in beautifully with no attempt to go back. I’ve done this many times in the past few years and never hd a problem. Though, if it comes to an exam ….go by the book!
Alan
27-04-25
Great day in the sunshine at the apiary learning about swarms, finding and marking queens, working with the gentlest of bees and much more……
“Was a great couple of hours“, Matt.
13-04-25
Excellent turnout at the Teaching Apiary today for all 3 sessions despite the threat of rain. We found lots to learn in the colonies we inspected, including finding a drone laying queen which we culled: after an hour to let them know they were queenless, we gave the colony a frame of eggs and young larvae. These came from the colony we shook swarmed 2 weeks ago and is now roaring away on new clean comb.
“A great learning opportunity“, Martin.
02-04-25
The Shook Swarm Colony is busy drawing out comb. The queen was seen but we didn’t spend much time inspecting due to the very cold wind so no eggs seen. Alan will treat them with Oxilic Acid before any brood is capped to get rid of varroa. There are more nurse bees than foragers so a sachet of Candipollen was added to give the bees a protein boost.
The colony was calm and good tempered and a pleasure to work with.
30-03-25
The colony donated to the association was Shook Swarmed due to all the frames being rotten, fragile and not fit for purpose.
The adjacent video shows the colony the following day enjoying the morning sunshine.
The exercise was completed by putting in the entrance reducer and feeding to assist the bees with drawing out foundation.