New Bee Keeper

Sue, the lady who I have been mentoring this year, is now a real bee keeper; following in her grand fathers' footsteps. I took a developing nucleus from one of my apairies over to her site near a restaurant/pub in Cannock Woods, Staffordshire. It was safely installed into a WBC with a good 3 frames of brood headed by a 2008 (red marked) queen who I had kept on following an artificial swarm on her original colony: a difficult decision was whether to give a colony with a 2010 queen of unknown ability or a queen who has to date been good and always produced gentle bees to set Sue safely on her way.

I hope the colony thrives well in its new location for Sue.

This leads me nicely into opening up my blog- new beekeepers, mentors, and training. All these new bee keepers should be a good thing, but is the level of training good enough? Is it right to make bees available to anyone regardless of their ability or experience? Should there be a more rigid/licensed route to becoming custodian of these sensate super organisms?