BBKA Examination Structure
BeeCraft have produced a great infographic to represent the structure of the BBKA Examination paths.
Feel free to download it and use as a referenence for your own route to a deeper understanding of beekeeping.
Knowledge Articles
Is your garden buzzing?
Tim Riggs explains why gardeners need to protect pollinating insects, and suggests how.
One of the dreamy delights of a garden is the sound of buzzing insects as they move from flower to flower, gorging on nectar and transferring or collecting pollen. If we like to save our own seed, or wish to encourage self-seeding, these pollinators are welcome agents of fertilisation, and of course they pollinate our apples, pears, plums and raspberries, but whether we benefit directly or not, we can enjoy their presence. A garden devoid of bees, hoverflies and butterflies is unthinkable.
Obtaining Your First Bees And Starting Beekeeping
There are numerous good sites offering sound advice about how to source your first bees.
This is simple sound advice and can be expanded on by further reading.
You can ask other bee keepers, but remember the old adage if you ask three experienced beekeepers the same question you will get at least 5 answers.
How Many Hives Should I Have
Obviously you have to start with one. You could buy 2 lots of bees or get two nuclei.
It is important to go steadily – doing too much at the start it is often easy to get carried away at start.
Having started with one colony. First lesson:
Beginner's Equipment
Beginners equipment: What do you need and how to source.
It depends what you want. Also how much you want to spend.
The first lesson is :
BeeBase
Beebase News Web feed-
BeeBase Email Outage
18 August 2022During the period Midday 12th August to Midday 17th August, some automated emails from BeeBase will not have been sent.
Therefore, if you did not receive an email when expected please re-submit your request.
Some systems affected included:
- Password reset emails
- Username reminders
All emails are now being processed as normal. -
Advice Note - Wasps
12 August 2022Many beekeepers are reporting the presence of large numbers of wasps in apiaries and around their bee hives. Please refer to the National Bee Unit factsheet on how to manage wasps: Wasp facts.
Mae llawer o wenynwyr yn cofnodi presenoldeb nifer enfawr o wenyn meirch mewn gwenynfeydd ac o amgylch eu cychod gwenyn. Cyfeiriwch at daflen ffeithiau yr Uned Wenyn Genedlaethol ar sut i ddelio â gwenyn meirch: Ffeithiau gwenyn.
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Interception of Honey Bee Queens at Dover
08 August 2022The NBU were called to a consignment of queen bees that were being imported through Dover Port without the Health Certificate. This led to action being taken resulting in the Queen bees being humanely destroyed.
Information on how to legally import honey bee Queens can be found on the imports/ export page at https://www.nationalbeeunit.com/index.cfm?pageId=126