In the Bleak Midwinter, a.k.a. Attending Bee School

Kevin and I are both former colleagues who have kept in touch at regular intervals. We share the same wild entrepreneurial interests in spawning off the cuff cottage industries in our own back yards and cornering otherwise unexplored niches in those crafts.

We had often discussed Beekeeping in the past and given our own brief experiences on the subject. We decided it was time to attend this year’s annual Worcester County Beekeepers Association (WCBA) Bee School, to learn more - Yes there is such a thing as a short term school for Bee Keepers!

Back in March on one dark, windy and very frosty night Kevin and I met for dinner at the local Mexican restaurant, before embarking into the bitter cold to attend Bee School - a 6 week or so annual event held in an upper floor auditorium at the local teaching hospital.

On this particularly icy night we joined the ranks of other beginners and experienced beekeepers alike to see what knowledge club members had to pass onto us over the coming weeks.

I won't go into the details of the next six weeks; save to say we missed several classes, but otherwise got a general feel for what beekeeping was about.

Typically we learnt that no two beekeepers will tell you the same thing, and no one beekeeper will probably tell you the same version twice on one occasion :)

Ultimately we did learn that even in mid January one needs to be thinking of acquiring some bee's either through a package or a nucleus hive (more about that later). Needless to say Kevin and I were in the hustle to sourcing some bee's to make a commitment this year, before it was to late.

Having decided that several waves of hungry bee school students were about to fill the Bee School subscription for packaged Bees, so we decided nucleus hives might be the way to go...