East of Scotland Beekeepers

East of Scotland Beekeepers Association - Beginners Course 2025

(photo above: four beginners on their first day at the bees, performing 'nucleus splits' on colonies preparing to swarm)

** payment for the course is outside of this booking system - see details later **

** here we collect your details and intentions **

Welcome to the booking site for our Beginners Course in 2025!

Here we will collect your details, lay out our plans, and indicate how you can see our four recorded lessons, our freshly updated slides for each session and come to our Saturday morning discussion meetings to go through all the issues for that session. Each of our four sessions covers some of the important aspects required to get going in beekeeping. We will then take you to handle bees in small groups and give you support for your continuing beekeeping education.

Interested? Pop your details in the forms below and you'll be on our list. We'll tell you how to pay our modest fee to secure a place on our course. £45 for non-members (includes our association membership fee and access to all our events this year) or £35 for those who are already ESBA members.

We will make available our recorded lessons and the slides for the sessions about a week before we meet. The informal discussion sessions around each set of topics will be held on Saturday mornings in the Tayside Deaf Hub in central Dundee. Last year this approach was greatly appreciated, with these new, informal sessions led by an expert beekeeper plus additional home learning prior to the day. You can keep the slides and videos for reference.

Who is this course for? Prospective beekeepers in our area and also for those who have started beekeeping and want to improve their knowledge and skills. We don't hide the difficulties of managing bees successfully and regard it as a success if some people decide not to proceed with beekeeping for now.

What area does ESBA cover? We are the long-established beekeeping association covering east Perthshire, Dundee and Angus. You will be invited to visit apiaries from Errol to Arbroath. We also have members from some areas of Fife and we have trained beekeepers from Aberdeenshire to the Lothians.

What is good about this course? It is for people keeping bees in our area, along with all its challenges. The course has continually evolved over the 15 years or so we've been delivering it. We cover such issues as queen failures and what to do about them (where else can you find out about that?!), local bee forage and local honeys, plus swarm control methods that actually work and are based on knowing what the bees are trying to do.

Indoor sessions:

Saturday 15th March 10:00-12:00: Introduction to beekeeping; equipment; setting up an apiary; costs commitments and risks; obtaining bees and advice. Queens 1 - what can go wrong?

Saturday 22nd March 10:00-12:00: The annual cycle; critical points; honey bee biology; Queens 2 - fixing problems.

Saturday 5th April 10:00-12:00: How to approach a hive; beekeeping issues; swarms and swarm control; Queens 3 - managing changes.

Saturday 12th April 10:00-12:00: Pests, diseases and veterinary medicines; honey harvesting and processing; Queens 4 - making your beekeeping resilient.

Provisional dates for hands-on apiary visits:

(small group visits, we hope that you will accept two of these. Dates are provisional and are very weather-dependent. Suits and gloves can be provided. Booking opportunities will be offered nearer the time.)

Saturday 17th May 14:00-16:00: Introduction to the bees at the apiary run by the course leader near Errol. Possible early swarm control.

Saturday 24th May/Sunday 25th May: Additional opportunities to see other beekeepers and participate in swarm control.

Saturday 31st May/Sunday 1st June: Additional opportunities to see other beekeepers and participate in swarm control.

Erica handling, marking and clipping a queen on her first day at the bees. Be more Erica! Join our course with the ESBA.

What you should expect to have achieved at the end of the course:

• an appreciation of the costs, the difficulties and the delights of beekeeping
• an understanding of how beekeeping changes through the seasons, and how your management has to adjust to follow that
• an understanding of what the bees are trying to do when they swarm, of your responsibilities to your neighbours, and what you can do to prevent swarming. Usually.
• an appreciation of the honeys the bees collect and how you need to extract and prepare them
• an understanding of the diseases and pests that might be found locally and what you can do to treat, manage and report them.
• who to turn to when you meet some situation you don't understand (and you will!)
• sourcing of bees and how to do this without risking importing new diseases

All this for just £45! (or £35 if already an ESBA member) We ask you to pay separately and use this Corsizio page to tell us that you wish to join our Beginners Course.