Learn about beekeeping at Royal Welsh Spring Festival - 19/20 May (From Smallholder)

Learn about beekeeping at Royal Welsh Spring Festival - 19/20 May

12:10pm Sunday 1st April 2012 in Bees

Interest in beekeeping in Wales is flourishing. In four years membership of the Welsh Beekeepers’ Association has increased from 800 to 1500 and is still rising.

The honeybee’s role in pollinating plants and agricultural crops is vital to food production worldwide and facts and figures relating to beekeeping and its importance to our food supplies will be available to visitors at this year’s Royal Welsh Spring Festival at Llanelwedd, Builth Wells, 19 - 20 May.

The Festival has helped to foster interest in beekeeping by promoting the activity through talks and demonstrations at the Festival where this year the emphasis will be on the training of beekeepers particularly newcomers to the craft.

“We are already setting up training programmes and recently held a training weekend on the showground where experienced beekeepers were instructed in the techniques needed to train those who have started beekeeping and need practical help and advice,” said Wally Shaw, the Welsh Beekeepers’ Association’s Technical Officer.

“People who keep bees are motivated by various reasons but generally speaking many new beekeepers are from younger age groups and our aim is to maintain their interest by helping them through some of the early stages. The Welsh Beekeepers’ Association consists of 19 local associations in Wales which people can join to acquire knowledge and assistance. My association, for example, in Anglesey, operates a mentoring system where newcomers can call upon a mentor for 2 consultation. Beekeeping is a craft in which it takes a number of years to become reasonably confident and newcomers need support and encouragement to prevent them from giving up.”

Visitors to the Festival can find out everything they want to know about keeping bees and how to get started from the Welsh Beekeepers’ Association’s stand in Exhibition Hall I on the showground, where the Shropshire Beekeepers’ Association will also be exhibiting, and also by calling at the Bee Tent located in the Forestry Area where the Swansea and District Beekeepers’ Association, together with members of other Beekeeper Associations in Wales, will explain the many good reasons why beekeeping can benefit the environment as well as beekeepers personally. There will also be an opportunity to peep into a hive to watch the fascinating bees at work.

A talk on beekeeping will be given in Speakers’ Corner by David Salkilld of the Swansea & District Beekeepers’ Association who has been keeping bees for over 30 years in his garden in Sketty.

www.rwas.co.uk - 01982 55 36 83 Win family tickets to the show in our April issue and a day at the Festival that money just cannot buy in our May issue due out 13 April