Branch Apiary

Apiary Schedule 2024

The apiary has opened for West Wiltshire BKA members to come along and attend club apiary sessions. We’d love to welcome all our members to come along, help out with the colonies, have a cup of tea and a chat, and enjoy an afternoon’s practical beekeeping!

If the weather isn’t favourable for the bees, or the colonies aren’t strong enough, the Apiary Manager might decide not to open the colonies for inspection. However, there are often other jobs or training that we can be doing in the club house, so even if we can’t do inspections, that doesn’t necessarily means that sessions will be cancelled.

If a session has to be cancelled, we will mailshot our members to let them know. A decision to cancel might be made at short notice. Mailshots will be sent to the e-mail address members gave us when they applied for/renewed their membership, so please check that e-mail address on the morning of a scheduled session just to make sure that the session will be running, and always let us know if you change your e-mail address so that your contact details are up to date.

Apiary sessions are held on Saturdays, starting at 14:00 :

About Our Club Apiary

We have excellent facilities, and members are welcome to join us for the fortnightly training sessions that we hold there throughout the beekeeping season.

During the season we carry out a variety of procedures, including:

• Queen marking/ clipping and keeping hive records
• Testing for varroa levels
• Disease inspections
• Treating for varroa
• Changing brood combs: new for old
• Changing a brood box
• Swarm control
• Queen rearing
• Clearing supers and taking honey
• Honey extraction
• Feeding colonies

As well as working directly with the colonies in the apiary, we have a well equipped club house which we use for apiary training during the beekeeping season. It’s also open after apiary sessions for a brew, a biscuit, and some chat about what we found during the inspections, and asking and answering each others’ questions about managing our own bees.

Our club apiary sessions begin each spring when the bees become active, and run through until late summer. We also hold a final session after autumn feeding and treatments have been completed to heft hives and check they have enough winter stores.

For more information about the branch apiary, please contact ApiaryManager-WWBKA@outlook.com