Bath Beekeepers Teaching Apiary

background

Bath Beekeepers Teaching Apiary has been at the present site since 1992. We are fortunate to have the use of part the grounds of a member’s property near  Bathampton, which is to the east of Bath. 

Hut Equipment

Inside the hut there is a gas stove for heating water, a worktop with drawers and cupboards below for storing cleaning equipment and tea towels. There is a notice board that has a few shelves behind with a first aid kit and other small items such as matches, pens, chalk and drawing pins. On the opposite wall to the dresser we have wide shelves where equipment such as Queen excluders, honey storage containers of various sizes, crown boards, clearer boards of different designs and examples of equipment that have defects of some kind. (Sidebars not pined to top bars, wax moth damage etc) In the rafters is a Bath Beekeepers sign and poles for an extension shelter that attaches to the front of the hut. Our protective bee suits for visitors are on hangers to one side of the shelves during the beekeeping season, and stored else where through the winter.

We have a wide range of Hives

As it is a Teaching Apiary, various designs of hives and equipment are in permanent use. The reason for having such a wide range of equipment is to give all beekeepers, especially new ones, a very broad experience of the craft and to show the advantages of some equipment over others.

In order to avoid mixing top and bottom bee space equipment a colour code is in operation. All top bee space equipment is painted the same colour as the hut.

All hives now have mesh floors with hinged doors and mite monitoring drawers below or some other mite-collecting device. To go with the open mesh floors we have insulation boards below the roof of each hive. B.T.A. (Bath Teaching Apiary) is branded into wooden equipment wherever possible.

Hive numbers are attached to both the roof and brood chamber of each hive.

Supers For Hives

We have a variety of National and Commercial supers available i.e. Top and bottom bee-space, castellated, Hoffman, Manley, metal ends and finger spaced.

Hive Management

Within each hive, the extent of the brood nest at the last inspection is indicated using drawing pins in the centre of the top bars. The age of each frame is also indicated by the standard colour code (W,Y,R,G,B,) on one end of each frame.

On the front of the hive, a piece of coloured plastic is pinned indicating the Queens age using the same colour code, if she has a number, that number is also indicated.

The apiary has it’s own hive tools and uncapping fork that are kept in a bucket of washing soda along with a brush for cleaning them. All other beekeepers hive tools are banned from use in the hives.

The policy is that you bring no disease and take none away with you. Disposable latex gloves are provided to cover leather gauntlets or rubber washable gloves are available for visitors if that is more acceptable. We also have our own smoker that one of the new beekeepers is invited to light up at the start of the meeting. We check that a mobile phone is available in case of emergency and the apiary address is displayed on the notice board.

The use of chemical treatments against Varroa mites that can leave residues in both honey and beeswax are avoided by using icing sugar, (inert powder), drone brood removal, and thymol based products along with the mesh floors

Bees for New Members

Most of our new members are looking for bees during their first year of beekeeping. Bath Beekeepers try to supply a swarm via the swarm liaison officer or from members with surplus bees. The Teaching Apiary also helps in this way if a colony is found to be producing Queen cells and is strong enough to be split into nuclei.

There are about eight nucleus boxes available for this purpose covering the three sizes of frames available in the apiary.