Spring management of honey bee colonies

• Understand the principles and practice of brood manipulation
• Understand biosecurity issues involved when moving bees
• Knowledge of bee behaviour
• Bee handling techniques
• Awareness of different types and purposes of brood manipulation to achieve a desired result
• Understand principles, practices and conditions required for re-queening a colony
• Understand queen bee behaviour, brood pattern and factors that may affect brood production
• Awareness of criteria for selecting a new queen bee
• Understand how to remove an unwanted queen bee
• Knowledge and methods for storage and introduction of a new queen bee

$595 GST-free

Day 1

• Castes of bees, bee development, hive box configurations
• Spring timing, Honey bee nutrition, conditions
• Equipment needed, risks to colony, biosecurity
• Inspection and manipulation process
• Ways to find a queen bee
• Types of brood manipulation with a view to swarm management

Day 2

• Monitoring hives after manipulations
• Queen health and replacement
• Colour coding
• Obtaining and caring for new queen
• Timing for replacement and removal of queen
• Introducing new queen
• Monitoring colony after new queen installed
• Swarms
• Creating an artificial swarm
• Hiving a swarm
• Assessment and evaluation

• Participants will receive a copy of PowerPoint presentation slides.
• This course is delivered using indoor and outdoor instruction which includes working with live bees.

There are no entry requirements for this course.

This course has been mapped to the following national units of competency:

• AHCBEK302 Manipulate Honey bee brood
• AHCBEK303 Re-queen a Honey bee colony.

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