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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Monday, January 20, 2014

The Short Course is DONE!

Julia and I worked since last summer getting ready for the short course.  It's amazing how much time it takes to prepare an event like that.  There are many little details, but we covered almost every one.  There were only tiny things that we wish we had done differently.

Here's what the room looked like on Friday, waiting for the registrants to arrive on Saturday.

 These are what we called the pollen baskets.  As people came in, they picked up their name tags and sat down.  Most of the people were from the Metro area, but we had someone with a Colorado address as well as people from outside of the Metro Atlanta area.  There were 105 registrants.  We sold out the week before the short course and had to tell about 30 people that we had no room for them after that.

However, our registration process was pretty clear to people and we didn't have anyone show up on the day of the event wanting to come in at the last minute, which was great because that would not have been fair to the 15 people on the wait list and the total of 30 that I told we didn't have room after registration closed.

The photo below is for the volunteer table.  We had antennae for the volunteers so people would know who was available to answer questions.  At lunch we had an "experienced beekeeper" sit at each lunch table so the participants could ask one on one questions during the lunch. Without some designation, the experts don't look any different than the participants, so we asked them to wear antennae.


The men were generally good sports about it!  Chris was a fabulous volunteer all day long, wearing many virtual hats, and, of course, his antennae.

We had demonstrations of how to light a smoker.  Curt did a great job of showing the participants how it is done.

And we had some breakout sessions on building hive equipment, top bars and foundationless beekeeping, and making hive products.  We were supposed to have a breakout on qualifying for certified naturally grown but the presenter decided she didn't want to talk about the topic - didn't really matter since only a few participants had signed up for it.

Noah's talk on top bar hives and foundationless beekeeping got the highest ratings for the breakout sessions so far in the evaluations we've received.  He is the youngest master beekeeper in the state of Georgia and is a very poised speaker, fielding questions well and doing an overall good job.

Julia and I enjoyed our work together to plan and prepare the course and I heard all day from many people that they were getting a lot out of it, so I am very, very pleased.

1 comment:

  1. Looks like quite a lot of work, but an enjoyable event nonetheless. I had to smile at the antennae. :)

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