Our 2025 Free-Living Honey Bee Workshops

The weekend of 19th and 20th of July kicked off our first two honey bee workshops of 2025. The aim of these workshops is to share knowledge, expertise and practical skills with people who want to learn more about the needs of the honey bee, and how we can help them thrive.

On the 19th July we hosted the Free-Living Honey Bee Workshop where a wonderful group of enthusiastic people enjoyed a guided walk though the rewilding site where we discussed everything “honey bee”, including forage, natural habitat, swarming, predators, and the pressures bees face from our environment.

On 20th July, Guy Thompson from Haslemere Museum Apriary, delivered a workshop aimed at bee keepers or budding bee keepers, who were keen to learn about a more bee-centric way of bee guardianship. This “Natural Bee Keeping Workshop” covered the same topics as our Free-Living Honey Bee Workshop, and in addition, Guy demonstrated the benefits of more bee-centric hives that could be used to harvest some honey, taking a deep dive into the design and workings of the Warre hive. We also examined other top bar hives including the Layens hive, looking at examples of healthy hives, robbed hives and the onset of wax moths. Our new top bar hive has an observation window so it enabled everyone to view the internal workings of the hive and the comb!

We’ve had great feedback from our attendees already, and we are keen to create a community of like-minded people who want to provide a more natural way of caring for bees than is currently provided using typical practices within bee keeping societies.

Anyone wishing to join this community… please get in touch!