- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Course instructors are Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño; staff research associate Bernardo Niño; facility manager/staff research associate Charley Nye; and graduate student Tricia Bohls. All courses, open to the public, will be taught at the Laidlaw facility, located on Bee Biology Road, west of the UC Davis central campus.
The courses are:
“Planning Ahead for Your First Hive”: A short course on Saturday, Feb. 13 for those with little or no beekeeping experience;
“Working Your Colonies”: A short course on Saturday, Feb. 20 for novice beekeepers, or those who already have a colony and want to develop more skills; and
“Queen-Rearing Techniques” with two separate sessions: Saturday and Sunday, March 12-13 and Saturday and Sunday, March 19-20. This course is for beekeepers who want to learn how to rear their own queens or learn bee breeding.
Capsule Information:
“Planning Ahead for Your First Hives”: This Feb. 13th course will include lectures and hands-on exercises. “This course is perfect for those who have little or no beekeeping experience and who would like to obtain more knowledge and practical skills to move on to the next step of owning and caring for their own honey bee colonies,” said Elina Niño. Lectures will cover honey bee biology, beekeeping equipment, how to start your colony, and maladies of the hive. Hands-on exercises will cover how to build a hive, how to install a package, how to inspect your hive, and how to monitor for varroa mites. Participants will learn what is necessary to get the colony started and keep it healthy and thriving, she said. By the end of the course, participants will be knowledgeable about installing honey bee packages, monitoring their own colonies and maintaining a healthy colony. The $95 registration fee covers the cost of course materials (including a hive tool), lunch, and refreshments.
“Working Your Colonies”: This Feb. 20th course is for novice beekeepers who already have a colony and/or have taken a previous course, and seek to develop their skills. The afternoon will be spent entirely in the apiary with hands-on activities and demonstrations. Lectures will cover: maladies and biology review, products of the hive, and troubleshooting problems in the colony. Hands-on information will encompass colony evaluations, monitoring and managing pests, feeding your colony, and honey extraction.By the end of the course, participants will be knowledgeable about evaluating colonies, solving common beekeeping problems, extracting honey and wax, trapping pollen and propolis, and treating colonies for pests, the instructors said. The $150 registration fee covers the cost of course materials, lunch, and refreshments.
“Queen-Rearing Techniques”: Each of the two sessions, March 12-13 and March 19-20, will include lectures, hands-on exercises. Topics will include honey bee queen biology, basics of selective honey bee breeding programs, various queen-rearing techniques, testing hygienic behavior, and assessing varroa mite levels.
Participants will have the opportunity to learn about and practice multiple methods for queen rearing. “We will go through a step-by-step process for queen rearing via grafting, including setting up cell builders and mating nucs,” Elina Niño said. At the end of the course, participants will be able to check their grafting success and local participants can take home queen cells from the workshop. They also will learn techniques to assess varroa mite loads and to evaluate hygienic behavior. Each session also will include a guided tour of the adjacent Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden that attracts many pollinators and is filled with art from the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Project and entomology/art classes taught by Diane Ullman and Donna Billick.
The $350 registration fee for each queen-rearing session covers the cost of course materials (including a set of grafting equipment: grafting frame with bars, plastic queen cups and a grafting tool), breakfast, lunch and refreshments on the days of the short course.
All participants in the Feb. 13-March 20 courses should bring their own bee suits or veils. They are also responsible for obtaining their own lodging. See map for directions. For more information, contact Bernardo Niño at elninobeelab@gmail.com or call 530-380-BUZZ (2899).
The Niño lab website is at http://elninobeelab.ucdavis.edu/, and the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/elninolab/. The bi-monthly apiculture newsletter, written by Elina Niño, is online.