Start your beekeeping adventure the right way.
Led by MABA’s panel of experts, this one-day intro to beekeeping course teaches the fundamentals using lectures and hands-on demonstrations. We’ll cover everything it takes to get started in Spring — from equipment selection and acquiring bees, to bee biology, inspections, pest control, harvesting honey, planting for polliinators, and more. Anyone interested in learning about honey bees is welcome to attend, even if a hive of your own is not in your immediate future.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
Check-in and Continental Breakfast begin at 8:30 AM.
Fee for the one day course is $125 per person
What’s Included
• Presentations and Demonstrations:
– Beekeeping Equipment and Hive Locations
– Installing the Bees
– Honey Bee Biology
– Smoker Lighting and Uses
– Flowering Plants and Trees for Bees
– Diseases and Pests of Honey Bees
– Hive Inspection and Care
– Honey Extraction and Hive Products
– A Year in the Apiary
• Validated parking
• One-year MABA club membership, including free hive inspecitons
• Lunch with an Experienced Beekeeper, featuring
– Personal advice from 50+ years combined experience keeping bees in urban and suburban settings
– Backyard hobbyists, sideliners, and commercial beekeepers that participate in the UGA Master Beekeeper Program
– Vegetarian, vegan, and gluten free options
• Artisanal honey tastings
• Door prizes, including a full beginner hive!
Each participant will also receive a goody bag filled with:
• UGA entomology professor Dr. Keith S. Delaplane’s book First Lessons In Beekeeping
• Beekeeping Supplier Catalogs
• List of sources to obtain bees
• Local honey and award winning hive products
• Helpful reference materials
• And more!
Equipment Vendor
Lanier Bee Barn, a local supplier of bees and equipment, will be joining us as our on-site vendor. Prospective beekeepers will have the opportunity to see equipment and try on beekeeping suits before purchasing. It’s a great chance to customize your apiary with advice from unbiased experienced beekeepers, according to your beekeeping goals and budget.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Setting up new hives must be done in the Spring, generally from March to May. Our course is offered in February to give potential beekeepers time to order bees & equipment and prepare a site for hives. Although we will have several hands-on demonstrations, this course will not involve working with live bees. During the beekeeping year, generally March through September, hands-on experience with live bees is available to all of our Intro to Beekeeping Short Course participants through MABA’s Hive Inspection program. Hive Inspections are conducted at apiaries all around the metro Atlanta area and allow newbees the chance to work a hive throughout the seasonal changes with an experienced beekeeper.