RESUME OF EDUCATION PLANNING MEETING
Held on Monday August 24th 2009
Representatives from all seven branches of the Lancashire & N.W. Beekeepers’ Association met in Burscough to discuss the future education in the County.
Lancaster is a very large branch and although they are moving to join the BBKA as a separate entity, running independently, they still plan to work in collaboration with the County.
It was thought that as the County was geographically quite wide spread, for some of these activities we would split into two; with Blackburn, Preston and Blackpool working in the north of the county and Ormskirk, Liverpool and Southport as the other group in the south. Lancaster branch has already been running a full education programme for some years now and we decided it would be good to take some of their initiatives and develop for other branches. It was decided to run a range of activities throughout the year.
This a brief outline of our plans.
SPRING 2010
INTRODUCTION TO BEEKEEPING
There will be at least three, weekend courses run by three branches following the excellent guidelines. This has been done in previous years, firstly by one, then two and next year, three branches.
Please go to the Courses section for more details.
SPRING/SUMMER 2010
TRAINING THE TRAINERS
1) Using recent newcomers to help, mentor next year’s intake of non beekeepers.
2) Using more experienced members to train recent newcomers and oversee the training.
3) IMPROVERS COURSE OF three or so full days for those who have been keeping bees for a year or two. Each will be seasonal to include activities that need some input from the more experienced beekeepers we now have in our County.
There will be no charge to members for these courses.
WINTER/SPRING 2009/2010
‘TASTER DAYS’ AS AN INTRO TO BEEKEEPING
One day course ‘Introduction to Beekeeping’ run by the two groups, north & south. This is a ‘First filter’ as we felt some people who followed the ‘Introduction to Beekeeping’ course never went beyond attending the course. We hope this way only the more dedicated would do the follow on full course in the spring and it may alleviate the problem of losing people in the early stages of their membership.
There will be a charge for these courses. We felt that this may alleviate the problem of losing people in the early stages of their membership.
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