Work Placements

Volunteer for some work during your summer break

Our placements are unpaid. You can volunteer for as little as 10 hours work or as much as 200 hours depending upon your availabilty, interest and how comfortable you are with bees.

As part of your work placement, you will learn about bees, protective clothing, the hive and how to handle the bees. It can be as much a hands-on experience as you wish. Shown left is our 2017 placement out collecting a swarm from a field. 

 

For her, this was a very first experience around so many bees in the open. You will be under the guidance and support of an experienced beekeeper who will help take photos for your work evidence portfolio

OK, so not everybody has the chance to collect a swarm from the wild but just look at the smile on the face. Over 20,000 bees in the box. We knew the Queen was in there as well because the worker bees that didn't go in were clinging around the ventilation grills to try to get closer to their Queen.

 

 

Your work placement will involve all the basics such as:

  • Bee biology
  • Protective equipment
  • Tools used
  • Feeding bees
  • Hive Inspections
  • Hive Manipulation

We try to make the experience as connected as possible. Earlier, Emily had been assembling frames and new foundation. This was an ideal opportunity to use the frames for the new colony.

 

 

If we can we will:

  • Get you to assemble enough hive bits to create a hive or nuc
  • Split a colony and locate it into the new hive/nuc
  • Get you to feed the bees
  • Use this hive as a reference and learning point while you are with us
  • You get to handle and inspect the bees!

Having prepared the hive to receive the swarm, it's now time to open the box and transfer the bees across. For a person unfamiliar with bees, this can be a nerve-wracking experience but you can do as much or as little as you wish. We do like to take you outside of your comfort zone a little though. Learning comes from taking on new challenges. We are careful to not make you fearfull of bees but a healthy respect is beneficial for them and you.

 

For work experience you will need to have a phone chat to understand how much time you wish to invest and what slots are open to you. If you have a particular interest then please let us know. Otherwise, we will do our best to give you a broad range of experiences and outcomes and to be able to create a photographic evidence file of tasks and learning completed.

Having rehoused the swarm, she had a chance to inspect the hive that the swarm had departed. Inside were several sealed Queen cells, including some hatching (see centre for Queen in cell about to come out).

 

These Queen cells were used to:

  • add to two Queenless colonies
  • create four mini-mating nucs
  • split another colony and add the Queen cell
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