Beekeeping 101: Organic, Natural, Traditional

This course offers complete instruction on keeping honey bees using organic, natural and traditional beekeeping techniques.

Beekeeping 101 was created over the course of a summer in order to capture a full season with the bees including lots of hands-on time in the hive. The course is intended to be a thorough introduction to keeping bees so that upon completion, the student can confidently start their own treatment-free honey bee hive. Taught from a permaculture perspective, this course will teach you a holistic approach to beekeeping that considers the natural ecology of honey bees and agriculture. Jacob's techniques are bee-friendly and bee-centered vs. beekeeper-centered.

Beekeeping 101 covers it all from basic honey bee physiology and biology to extracting honey and preparing your hive for winter. In this course you will learn about different kinds of honey bees and equipment and where to get it. You'll learn about bloom and brood cycles, swarms, hive site placement, queens and re-queening, planning your honey harvest, extracting honey and crushing comb, combining hives and much more. In addition Jacob will share with you his philosophies on feeding only honey and pollen, using locally adapted stock, never using plastic or treatments, mimicking nature's patterns. As this course was filmed over the course of the summer season, lesson topics follow the flow of the season.

This course was filmed over the course of the summer on 5 different days. Each day's topics strays somewhat from the agenda as Jacob addresses student questions.