Over the weekend of 25th–26th July, five of our members “Sutton Coldfield” , along with two members from Birmingham and Coventry Warwickshire associations, took the BBKA Honey Bee Health Assessment at our apiary within Sutton Park. The weather was kind to us – a little cooler than of late but still pleasantly warm, and thankfully we managed to dodge the few showers that had been forecast! Candidates were required to carry out a thorough a full disease inspection on a live colony of honeybees before demonstrating either a shook swarm or a Bailey comb change on a weak colony. This was followed by a discussion with the examiner, answering questions on honeybee health and disease management.
The Honey Bee Health Assessment is a challenging assessment and with exam nerves inevitably kicking in, remembering everything at the right moment is often easier said than done! Now comes the difficult part – waiting! Results should be with us in a couple of weeks, and we wish all the candidates the very best of luck. A huge thank you goes to both assessors Jane Nimmo and Jane Medwell for travelling to Sutton Park and giving up their weekend to support Warwickshire candidates. We would also like to thank everyone who works so hard behind the scenes to keep our apiary and equipment clean, tidy, encouraging and supporting our candidates and ensuring everything is ready for events such as this. Your dedication makes training and assessments like these possible, and we are incredibly grateful for everything you do. We’re keeping everything crossed and hope to be celebrating a clean sweep of passes in a couple of weeks’ time. Good luck, everyone!
It should be noted that this type of assessment focuses the students on bee health, this is something we should all focus on and these students we hope will go on and share the knowledge they have acquired and share that knowledge and experience gained making us all better Beekeepers.
Written by Alison Vaux and Jitesh Patel
