About this course

Improve your hive management throughout the seasons

Want to grow your hive numbers, manage swarming and increase honey production? This two-day course at Tocal will help you develop the skills to manage honey bee colonies throughout the year. You’ll learn how to maintain strong, healthy colonies for honey production, pollination services and queen bee rearing.

You’ll learn how to:

  • re-queen honey bee colonies
  • manipulate honey bee brood for specific purposes
  • manage colonies to support healthy growth and productivity
  • prepare colonies for pollination services and queen bee rearing
  • apply practical seasonal management techniques to improve colony performance.

Whether you want to expand your apiary, improve honey production or prepare colonies for pollination and queen bee breeding, this course will help you build your practical beekeeping skills.

Is this course right for me?

This course is suited to beekeepers who want to build on their existing knowledge and develop practical skills in seasonal honey bee colony management. It may be particularly useful if you want to increase hive numbers, manage swarming, improve honey production or prepare colonies for pollination services and queen bee rearing. If you’re ready to strengthen your colony management skills, click on the register now button.

At a glance:

Location: Statewide
Course duration: 2 days
Start date: Multiple intakes
Number of units: 2
Indicative fees: $745 GST-free
Accredited Course: Yes

Details

  • 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

$745 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.

Participants must:

  • Be intermediate or practicing beekeepers with prior basic experience opening, inspecting, and managing European honey bee hives.
  • Be comfortable working outdoors in active apiaries while manipulating frames, moving heavy hive components, and handling live bees.
  • Have no known severe or life-threatening allergies to bee stings (anaphylaxis).
  • Be physically capable of lifting, bending, carrying, and stacking hive boxes (supers) weighing up to 15–20 kg.
  • Supply and wear mandatory protective personal gear during practical apiary work (including full bee suit/jacket with veil, protective gloves, and sturdy closed-in leather footwear).
  • Strictly follow field biosecurity protocols and trainer safety instructions at all times.

Language, Literacy, Numeracy, and Digital Capability Requirements

To complete this course successfully, participants will need:

  • Reading: Interpreting seasonal management guides, floral resource bloom calendars, swarm control checklists, and queen introduction instructions.
  • Writing: Completing apiary inspection logs, hive division (split) records, requeening tracking sheets, and honey flow yield notes.
  • Numeracy: Tracking seasonal brood expansion frames, calculating split ratios, monitoring brood frame configurations (e.g., Demaree swarm control methods), and managing timing schedules for queen acceptance.
  • Oral Communication & Hearing: Communicating effectively with instructors and peers during live hive manipulations and responding to safety instructions in the field.
  • Digital Literacy: Basic computer or smartphone skills

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



Additional Information

For information on students rights and responsibilities, and the Tocal College Code of Practice see Industry qualification student policies.



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