Beecentric Beekeeping 1-day course at Karjalohja 5th May 2019

Erkki has held a course on ”Beecentric Beekeeping with topbar hives” at Karjalohja since 2016 following Patrick Sahlman’s course in April 2016. Those courses have been in Finnish but now there seems to be demand for a course in English. The course will be held on 5th May which gives us a chance to also visit – weather allowing – the Iso-orvokkiniitty apiary. Hopefully the bees – which are in topbar hives, Warré hives and standard Farrar hives – have overwintered well.

(Erkki Poytaniemi) — Erkki presenting the construction of a topbar hive on the course in 2016.

The day will include biology of bees as a superorganism, different thoughts about natural, organic and beecentric beekeeping, basics of beekeeping and practical guidelines on keeping bees in topbar hives. Before lunch we will attempt to understand bees and in the afternoon we will be more practical and we’ll end the day with a visit to the apiary at Iso-orvokkiniitty. If the weather is good we can inspect a topbar hive. If it is too cold, at least we can peak into the hives through the observation windows.

We will focus on horizontal topbar hives but discuss briefly also Warré hives (vertical topbar hives) and natural beekeeping in standard frame hives.

You are welcome to the course weather you are absolute novice to beekeeping or an experienced beekeeper looking for some new inspiration and thoughts. If you are a novice to beekeeping I recommend a standard beekeeping course as well – 1 day is absolutely not sufficient to make anyone into a beekeeper.

Place: Karjalohjan Kylätalo Kehrä

Time: 5.5.2019
klo 9.30 – 17.00

Program:

9.30 Welcome coffee or tea