Bee School open for beginning, intermediate, advanced beekeepers
Beekeeping can be a safe, fun family activity that will also provide honey for your table and pollination for your garden.
BRENHAM— Learn how to produce your own honey and help save the bees by attending the Central Texas Beekeepers School on Saturday, March 23 at Brenham High School in Brenham. The school is open to the public for anyone interested in keeping bees or who wants to learn about bees.
Provide your family with this natural sweetener, increase the number of bees to help pollinate our gardens and help the dwindling bee population by raising bees in your back yard, even in populated areas. Most cities allow at least two bee hives per home depending on the size of your lot. You can contact your city offices for regulations in your area.
The beekeeping school will teach you the parts of the hive, how to build or assemble your equipment, how to install bees, the proper procedure for lighting a smoker and how to inspect your bees. You will learn how to dress to minimize the possibility of being stung and what to do if you are stung.
You will see how to extract honey and how to care for it before you eat it or give it to your family or friends. Weather permitting, you can even “suit up” and be present while a live bee hive is opened and inspected.
Classes for Intermediate and Advanced beekeepers are also available. Raising Queens, Pest and Disease Control, Packaging and Marketing your Honey and Growing into a Commercial Operation will be offered.
The cost is $65 for the first adult and $60 for additional adults in the family. Cost for students (including college students) is $25. Children under the age of 12 attending classes with a parent are $10.
The school starts at 8 a.m. and will be over at 5:30 p.m. The cost of the school includes a catered barbecue meal with Blue Bell Ice Cream and a “school book” with information about beekeeping. Door prizes will be given away and a drawing to give away complete bee hives to four attendees will be held at 5 p.m.
To register or receive our newsletter, go to www.centraltexasbeekeepers.org. For more information, call (979) 277-0411 or email: centraltexasbeekeepers@ gmail.com
The Central Texas Beekeepers meets the 4th Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m. at the Washington County Fairgrounds. Anyone interested in beekeeping is welcome at the meetings.