Welcome to Bee Keeping 101 (Part 1)

I was very excited to be able to attend my first ever beekeeping training (for free!) at Nixon Park this past Saturday with some friends. The training was given by Morrell Sipe, vice president of the York County Bee Keepers Association. He learned how to keep bees by taking a class through HACC (gotta look into that!). The YCBK meet on the 4^th Thursday of each month at the Penn State York campus. If you join, they will assign you a mentor that lives close to help you through the beekeeping process (I think this is AWESOME!!). The PA State Beekeeper's Association also has a lot of information as well as a monthly newsletter for joining.

Morrell also had some back issues of two journals, Bee Culture and American Bee Journal, for us to take if we like.

The former president of the YCBK, Jeremy Barnes, was there for a short time, and I have a pretty strong feeling he was one of my history professors at York College. Unfortunately he wasn't there at the end so I couldn't find out for sure!

I took an immense amount of notes and decided I needed to type them to have them organized, and thought they would make a great series here! Join me each day as I help relay some of the wonderful information given at the training and hopefully peak your interest into beekeeping (or at the very least put you in awe of God’s handiwork in these creatures!). I will accompany each piece of information with some bee pictures from my own garden : )

I thought we could start with the most boring, yet necessary section of information:

Legal Mumbo Jumbo

You need to register with the state and it costs $10 for two calendar years. The inspectors’ goal is to inspect 50% of all hives every 2 years with concentration on hives that have had disease outbreaks in the past. 

Here’s the link for the Bee Law.

 
*Disclaimer: I am in no way a beekeeping expert. I only wish to share some knowledge I gained from the training as well as excitement for the possibility of doing more to be self-sustaining. Please look into the resources further before making a decision to start beekeeping. Thank you!