The 2025 Intermediate Beekeeping Class course details
The intermediate beekeeping course is designed for the experienced beekeeper that has taken a multi-month, season long, hands-on beekeeping class (such as the Dahlem or SEMBA beginning beekeeping course) or a written submission describing five years of beekeeping experience.
The course focuses on raising queens through in-person instruction and hands-on practice on hives in the Dahlem apiary. Students will practice and implement various techniques such as grafting, making queen cages and harvesting queen cells and queens.
The course provides:
- A dead-out hive for forensic examination
- A queen right hive to use to teach queen rearing practices
- A grafting tool for each student to use for queen rearing
- Grafting equipment used to raise queens
- Queen rearing grafting date wheel
- Queens or queen cells for students to take home, depending on the success of queen rearing
Students provide:
- (Optional) Your dead-out hive for forensic analysis by the instructors
- Beekeeping clothing and disinfected tools
- A queen right hive(s) at home to implement queen rearing practices
- Spare hive hardware or Nucleus hive at home and drawn frames to implement queen rearing practices
- Queen cell or Queen cage for transport home, depending on the success of queen rearing
Recommended course reading: ‘Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping’ by Dewey M. Caron with Lawrence John Connor
Dates/Times
- Feb 23 – Course planning, Running a Bee Business
- March 23 – Instruction: Bee reproduction, biology, mating. Early spring management. Apiary skills: Forensics of a dead-out
- April 27 – Instruction: Raising queens for colony health, problem hives, increases, swarms, diversity and profit. Apiary skills: Setting up a swarm hive
- May 18 – Instruction: Hive types and uses. Integrated v. Dedicated rearing systems. Apiary skills: Notching and cutting comb, queen marking. Set up Cloake Board configuration for Queen Rearing hive.
- June 8 – Instruction: Cloake Board techniques and Dedicated Queen Rearing hives Apiary skill: Grafting, making queen cages. Remove open comb for egg laying. Installation of Notched and Cut frames to brood chamber
- Week of June 15 – Instruction: Mites and miticides. Apiary skill: (+ 3-7 days) Add isolator to Queen Rearing hive. Install Notched and Cut frame eggs to Cloake Board. Install open comb for egg laying in brood chamber.
- June 22 – Instruction and Apiary skill: Grafting and installing grafts
- June 23 (optional attendance) – Apiary skill: Remove Cloake Board isolator
- June 29 – Instruction: Split / Nuc creation, Overwintering techniques Apiary skill: Cage queen cells, remove queen cells. Take home a Queen cell (pending availability) to establish your Nuc.
- July 6 – Instruction: Queen introduction. Apiary skill: Collect queens. Take home a Queen (pending availability) to establish your Nuc.
Where
The Dahlem Conservancy, 7117 S. Jackson Rd., Jackson, MI 49201
Dahlem Ecology Farm Beeyard, 1429 Wickwire Rd., Jackson, MI 49201
Tuition
Individual: $165 non-member / $150 member
Couple/family – up to two people: $320 non-members / $290 members
Payable in advance
Instructors
John and Kim Haynes jandkhaynes@gmail.com; Phone 248-565-7266
Michigan State Extension provides useful beekeeping information under beekeeping articles and videos at https://pollinators.msu.edu/resources/beekeepers/
