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Beekeeping Essentials Online Course

5 Modules 13 Chapters 31 Lessons Easy

About this course

In this online course you learn how to manage your busy life and beekeeping hobby with the support of a passionate mentor who will guide you through a beekeeping year.

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Course Structure

Customers Only
3 Chapters

Get Familiar With Your Inner and Outer Landscape

We start this course with a look at a glance at the most important factors in any beekeeping activity.

You, the Beekeeper and Your Beekeeping Activity 1 Lesson

Overview

We found seven main factors that matter in beekeeping, with the beekeeper in the center. Having clarity on each of them helps you make better decisions and manage your activity better.

Legislation 1 Lesson

Local Beekeeping Legislation

This part is focused mainly on the beekeeping legislation in Ontario, Canada.
The presentation (both video and PDF) and course content for this part include references to the bee laws and associations in USA.

Customers Only
4 Chapters

Your Amazing Honey Bees and How They Do It

If we compare beekeeping with driving a car, many will say that we don’t actually need to know what happens under the hood to be able to drive it. True, until we start to have problems. But while we can take a car to the mechanic to fix it, with a beehive we need to fix the problems ourselves. And it is cheaper to learn to do it ourselves, than to pay the mechanic for a house visit.

If we don’t know the bee biology, we won’t be able to understand why we don’t get the expected results we want. This can frustrate us to no limits!

Then we look at the bigger picture, which is the biology of the colony. We’ll learn about the members of the colony and what their role is.

We will also learn about the bee breeds we can find in North America and how to choose the breed that will offer the most success for us.

We will continue by studying the life cycle of the colony, how it grows, becomes an adult and multiplies. By understanding the two modes of operation of the colony, we will be able to stir it in the direction we want without too much trouble. If we do not do that, we can lose production and sometimes even the colony itself. 

After we learnt how the colony functions, we must see what diseases it can suffer from and how to prevent them or treat them when they appear. Again, if we do not learn this, we can suffer total losses, because for one specific disease the only treatment is by burning the hive completely!

Beekeepers massively underestimate the importance of monitoring the levels of the Varroa mite parasite that is a vector for many other diseases and most of the time leads to the death of the colony in the second season or sometimes even sooner. That is the reason for integrating a usually separate course in the basic beekeeping course. It is one of the keys to avoid wasted resources.

The Biology of the Honey Bee 2 Lessons

The Honey Bee – What Makes it Tick and How Is Its Life

Beekeepers, even experienced ones, makes observation and draw conclusions. Sometimes, these conclusions prove to be false thanks to discoveries by scientists. Together we shall find more about the honey bee and why we should care about her complex yet not so complex biology and life.

Honey Bee Biology - Questions & Answers

Watch few questions that participants had related to the biology of the honey bee colony.

Biology of the Honey Bee Colony 1 Lesson

The Honey Bee Colony - Biology of a Unity

Honey bees are social creatures and they live as one in the hive. Now we shall discover together how the honey bees in the bee hive become one. We learn about the cyclical nature of the colony's life and what do we, beekeepers, do about it to help it develop in a healthy way AND, preferably, staying in our apiary :)

Life of the Honey Bee Colony 1 Lesson

How the Honey Bee Colony Communicates and Behaves

In this part we learn about he instinctual mind of the honey bee hive and how communication takes place inside it.

Colony Health Challenges 2 Lessons

Diseases and Parasites

A honey bee colony inside an apiary, in man made bee hives, has certain challenges different than honey bees in the wild. We, the beekeepers, need to take really good care of them and be aware of those challenges as we can influence their lives tremendously.

Customers Only
3 Chapters

Priority Setting and Application of Your Craft

In this module we will find out about different types of "homes" for the bee colonies that are available, what kind of tools we need to work on our colonies and how to inspect a colony.

Types of Hives 2 Lessons

Types of Beehives to Choose From

Here we take a look at a few popular hive types so you can chose the best one for you!

Beekeeper's Tools, Protection and Equipment 2 Lessons

Tools, Protection and Extraction

As any other craft, beekeeping has it's own set of tools, protection and optional equipment. Here you will also find a cost breakdown for your first year and the next.

How to Inspect the Honey Bee Colony 2 Lessons

Inspect A Honey Bee Colony

A step by step instruction set to inspect a honey bee colony.
Customers Only
3 Chapters

Get All Set Up For Bee Stewardship

Once you get your first nucleus colony, let's look at how it will develop into a full hive. To make sure we don't forget anything, a good practice is to follow the beekeeper's calendar. And of course, we want to keep our bees in our yard, not in the neighbor's trees, so we learn how to split and later merge the colonies.

The First Season 2 Lessons

Your First Beekeeping Year

Here you will learn everything you need to do in order once you got your nucleus hives to successfully prepare it for winter.

Beekeeper's Calendar 2 Lessons

Beekeeper's Calendar

A month to month list of work to be done in the following beekeeping years.

Splitting and Merging Colonies 1 Lesson

Splitting To Prevent Swarming and Multiply Your Bee Hives

We learn to split colonies for swarm prevention and merge them back to winter strong colonies.
Customers Only
11 Lessons

Enjoying Your Investment (Bee Products)

And finally, let's take a dive and see what products can we get from our colonies and what are they good for!

Honey

The health benefits of honey and how to extract it.

Pollen

The health benefits of pollen and how to collect it.

Propolis

The health benefits of propolis and how to collect it.

Beeswax

The health benefits of beeswax and how to collect it.

Royal Jelly

The health benefits of royal jelly and how to collect it.
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