Off the Wahl Beekeeping

Creating Beekeepers, Not Just Bee Owners

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By: Richard Wahl

Clubs, Conferences or Bee Schools
Having visited many clubs and attended numerous conferences throughout my years as a beekeeper, I have experienced a wide variety of learning environments for beginning beekeepers. Each serves an important role in providing continuing education for the uninitiated, but a true bee school is much more than attending a single day of lectures, visiting a club once a month, or watching YouTube videos. When most people hear the words “bee school”, they picture a classroom with rows of chairs, a PowerPoint presentation, and someone standing at the front explaining some facet of the fascinating world of honey bees. While there’s certainly a place for all of that, a truly effective bee school should be much more than lectures, textbooks, and the occasional quiz. Honey bees have an uncanny ability to remind us that some of the most valuable lessons simply cannot be learned while sitting in a classroom. They must be witnessed firsthand, with a veil on your head, a smoker in one hand, and a hive tool in the other.

A good bee school blends knowledge with the patience of seasoned mentors. Reading assignments, instructional videos, and classroom discussions provide the foundation, but the real education begins when students zip up their bee suits, light a smoker, and open a hive under the watchful eye of experienced instructors. It is one thing to read about or listen to someone explain how to spot a queen or perform a mite test. It is another thing entirely to inspect a hive with thousands of bees calmly going about their business, while you search for that elusive, long-bodied queen who seems determined to stay just out of sight. Performing a mite test under the guidance of a proficient mentor creates a far more lasting lesson than simply listening to someone explain the process. There is something about seeing the bees, handling the equipment, and asking questions in the moment that makes the information stick. As one of the co-instructors in the bee school where I teach often reminds our students, “The classroom teaches the hows and whys of keeping bees, while the apiary teaches you how to actually do it.” “Club meetings and conference lectures merely ‘help’ you continue the process.” As another co-instructor states, “We make a concerted effort to be ever cognizant of the fact that beginners ‘don’t know what they don’t know,’ and, therefore, we do our best to deliver information simply and at a pace that does not overwhelm the new beekeeper”.

More Than a Classroom
As already mentioned, I have had the privilege of serving as a bee school co-instructor with the Southeast Michigan Beekeepers Association (SEMBA) Bee School for the past five years. Without getting into a long history of the SEMBA Bee School, which dates back to 1938, it now offers annual hands-on instruction at two different facilities. In a typical year, between twenty-five to thirty beginning beekeepers attend classes at each one of these two on-site locations. The Tollgate Farm in Novi, Michigan, is a historic 160-acre property first settled in 1831. Its connection to Michigan State University (MSU) began when owners Adolph and Ginger Meyer donated part of the land in 1979 and 1987 to establish a public agricultural and youth education center. The Bowers School Farm in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, is a 93-acre working farm owned by the Bloomfield Hills Schools (BHS) district since 1967. It serves as an educational land laboratory and community park where MSU Extension provides research-backed agricultural curriculum, youth 4-H programs, and Master Gardener initiatives. At both locations, the SEMBA Bee School has access to classroom space for lectures and discussions. Just a short walk away from the classroom is a two-acre teaching apiary where students maintain a hive during their first year of beekeeping instruction. Having the classroom and apiary side by side allows lessons to move seamlessly from theory into practice. Students can learn about a hive component, bee behavior, or a management technique in the classroom and then, moments later, suit up and apply that knowledge by opening a hive under the watchful eye of skilled mentors. That combination of classroom learning and hands-on experience is what transforms a bee school from simply talking about beekeeping into actually teaching it.

Welcome to Bee School; Homework Included
One aspect that separates a true bee school from a collection of independent classes, conference presentations, or monthly club meetings is having a well-planned syllabus that follows both the calendar and the seasonal development of a honey bee colony. At the SEMBA Bee School, students have access to a website that lets them know from the very beginning when they will meet, what material they are expected to cover before arriving, and what they should accomplish by the end of each session. Rather than presenting information in random order, each month’s lesson builds upon the previous one while coinciding with what is actually happening inside the hive. Learning about installing bees makes little sense in November; just as discussing Winter preparation is difficult to appreciate in April. By matching the curriculum to the beekeeping season, students are able to immediately apply what they have learned during their next visit to the apiary. As part of the registration fee, each student is required to purchase the school’s designated textbook. SEMBA Bee School uses the text, Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping by Dewey M. Caron and Lawrence John Connor; a text that is widely recognized as a major college-level textbook on apiculture and honey bee management for college level course work across the American university landscape. It serves as the primary reference throughout the course and, more importantly, remains a valuable resource long after course completion. Another classic that would be equally at home on every beekeeper’s bookshelf is The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture published by the A.I. Root Company.

Before each monthly class, assigned reading prepares students for the upcoming topic. Those assignments are reinforced with carefully selected instructional videos that allow students to observe techniques and hive conditions that are difficult to fully appreciate in print alone. More often than not, these videos come from the University of Guelph Honey Bee Research Centre in Ontario, Canada and cover practical beekeeping techniques, ranging from beginner fundamentals to advanced management. Students are also assigned timely academic essays, research papers, and presentations related to apiculture, pollinator health, and honey bee diseases; many prepared by Dr. Meghan Milbrath, Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Entomology at MSU. Classroom discussions tie everything together, giving instructors the opportunity to expand on the material, answer questions, and relate these concepts to the realities of beekeeping in southeast Michigan. Short quizzes, sent to students a week or two prior to each class, accompany the reading and video assignments. They are not intended as a means to assign grades or create unnecessary stress. After all, the bees will provide plenty of humbling moments on their own. Instead, the quizzes are a simple way to encourage students to stay current with the material while helping instructors identify topics that deserve additional discussion. By the time students suit up and walk into the teaching apiary at their hives, they already have a solid understanding of what they are about to observe, allowing the hands-on experience to reinforce, not replace, the lessons learned in the classroom.

Calendar Dates and Meeting Times
Classes are scheduled to meet eleven times at the apiary on a slightly less than monthly basis from January through October. We have chosen Sunday afternoon meetings from 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. because that is when most students can attend class without interfering too much with family or work schedules. In addition, two Zoom meetings, open to alumni, with “dates to be determined” are held, one in early Spring and another in the Fall, to answer questions that have accumulated and to reinforce the seasonal tasks of bringing colonies out of, or preparing them to go back into Winter. The Fall session focuses once again on Winter preparations. By that point, students have removed their colonies from the common teaching apiary and relocated them to their home apiaries. At both locations, colonies must be removed by October 1. Bee School begins its annual monthly meetings in January in the classroom. If weather is a problem, as can be the case with Michigan Winters when travel is impractical, a Zoom meeting is held. Students and instructors introduce themselves, with students sharing what sparked their interest in beekeeping and instructors explaining how long they have been keeping bees. The annual class schedule is reviewed at that first meeting, with classes meeting about once a month until students receive their bees in late April or early May. Once the bees arrive, meetings shift to approximately every three weeks to keep pace with the rapidly changing needs of a growing colony. The first class also introduces students to the Bee School website and explains how to use it throughout the season. Instructors review the syllabus, emphasize the importance of staying ahead of the assigned reading and videos, and explain how the monthly quizzes reinforce the current topics. Students also learn what equipment is essential before their bees arrive, what purchases can comfortably wait until later, and where they can obtain both equipment and bees. The registration fee includes the required textbook as well as a wooden nucleus box, ensuring that every student begins the season with the same basic tools for success. The registration process is handled by our SEMBA admin staff with registration for the following year beginning around December 1.

Starting Off Right
In addition to the textbook, each student receives a nuc box included in the registration fee. A “nuc box” does not come with bees. Throughout the season, students discover that a nuc box serves many purposes. It is simply the empty wooden box that can be used to house a newly purchased nucleus colony, provide temporary housing for a captured swarm, serve as a home for a split, transport bees, maintain a small colony, or even become a small “hospital” hive for a queen that needs a little extra attention. A nucleus box with bees (nuc) can provide a replacement queen, donate eggs, larvae, capped brood, or a honey or pollen frame to strengthen a full-sized colony when needed. Before long, most beekeepers discover that a spare nuc box is about as handy as an extra hive tool, except you usually know where you left it. When beekeepers refer to a “nuc”, they are usually describing a small established colony rather than just the box itself. A typical nucleus (nuc) colony contains a laying queen, several frames of eggs, larvae and capped brood produced by that queen, along with a resource frame of honey and pollen and an empty frame for expansion.

Students arrange to purchase their bees either through the instructional staff or from well-regarded local nuc producers in the area. The cost of the bees is separate from the registration fee. The nuc colony may be placed directly into the student’s nuc box before pickup, or it may simply be delivered by the nuc provider. For many beginning beekeepers, installing their nuc colony into a full eight or ten frame hive is their very first hands-on experience with their own bees. While most students use standard Langstroth equipment, some choose to install their bees into a horizontal hive or another hive design. Here in southeast Michigan, students are typically provided their nucleus colonies between the last week of April, through about the middle of May. Including a nuc box with registration is intentional. We want every student to have one from the very beginning and to view it as much more than a temporary shipping container. Throughout a beekeeper’s journey, a nuc box often becomes the colony’s emergency room, maternity ward, moving van, and spare-parts department, all rolled into one. Time and again, it proves to be one of the most useful pieces of equipment a beekeeper can own.

Instruction Staff
Naturally, the bee school could not exist without a core of seasoned instructors. Our experienced, veteran, seasoned mentors/instructors/teachers all have ten years or more of beekeeping under their belt. New interns may be from the past year’s class and often stay on for future years. We find the newbies provide a reassuring presence for first timers and often are interested in refining their own skills while assisting our “veterans”.

SEMBA Bee School operates with a group of volunteer instructors and management staff that teach in the classroom and apiary as well as several who provide behind the scenes support. Four or five experienced mentors have been recruited for each of the two locations. One lead mentor maintains the monthly meeting organization while one or two recent graduates from the school are also retained as intern mentors. In this way, as an individual chooses to retire from mentoring, there is someone in line to replace them. Part of the registration fee from students is used to cover travel expenses for the mentors who participate primarily on a volunteer basis. One of the mentors handles syllabus revisions each year while another SEMBA member handles the student registration process. Another mentor takes on the responsibility of coordinating which nuc providers are selling nucs to each student as most beginning beekeepers choose to purchase one or two nucs for their first year. Students often maintain one nuc on-site while maintaining one or two more at their home apiary. Occasionally a student will take the class and not purchase a nuc just to see what the whole beekeeping process entails before purchasing bees the following year. The fee for the entire year long course is set at $500.00. This is far below what tuition would be at a university level semester course and provides access and techniques from multiple individuals rather than a single college professor. The best recruitment asset is students who have completed the course referring others to “such a valuable hands-on learning experience”.

Designing a Beginner Bee School That Works
When you step back and look at what makes a beginner bee school successful, the answer really is not all that complicated. It is not the size of the classroom, the number of PowerPoint slides, or even how many years the instructors have been keeping bees. It is designing a program that allows students to learn the right information at the right time, then immediately put that knowledge into practice under the guidance of experienced mentors. A well-organized syllabus that follows the seasonal development of a honey bee colony, quality reading assignments, carefully selected videos, thoughtful discussions, and hands-on apiary experience all work together to create confident beekeepers rather than overwhelmed bee owners.

The bees themselves are the final instructors. They do not care how well someone scored on a quiz or how many books they have read. Every hive inspection presents new questions, unexpected challenges, and opportunities to learn. A good bee school prepares students to meet those moments with knowledge, curiosity, and confidence instead of uncertainty. If a beginning beekeeper finishes the season not only knowing what to do, but also understanding why they are doing it, then the school has accomplished something far more important than simply teaching someone how to keep bees. It has laid the foundation for a lifetime of thoughtful beekeeping; and that is a lesson that continues long after the classroom lights are turned off and the last smoker has gone cold. For additional information on starting a bee school or the possibility of becoming a SEMBA Bee School Extension using the SEMBA Bee School syllabus refer questions to the email: sembabees.info@gmail.com