Keeping honeybees is fascinating and rewarding.
This is an informal, non-examination course where no previous knowledge or experience is required, to learn about how to get started as a beekeeper.
We concentrate on teaching the “basics” that include good colony handling techniques and factual things that all beekeepers should know in order to care for their bees responsibly, such as the life cycles of queens, drones and workers, the swarming procedure and disease recognition.
Our course runs for six weeks, held at the Lyndhurst Community Centre, SO43 7NY, on Wednesday evenings, 7.30pm to 9.30pm, starting mid-February each year. To register for our course, please complete the registration form. The 2026 details are:
Dates: 18th, 25th of February, followed by 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th of March
The cost of the course is £95.00. This includes two hands on ‘meet the bees’ apiary training and Associate membership to New Forest & District Beekeeping Association. Associate membership includes monthly newsletters by email, together with opportunity of joining our monthly members? meetings, at Lyndhurst Community Centre and listening to our monthly expert speakers.
To register your interest and for more information, please click on the button below, complete the form and email it to the education officer.
Under 18s on the Courses
NF&DBKA welcomes the attendance of under 18s on our training courses, but due to child protection requirements NF&DBKA requires that either a guardian or parent also attends. If a child is attending the courses without their parent or legal guardian, but with another guardian (e.g friend of the family) NF&DBKA requires a letter from the legal guardians/parents confirming that the other party is acting as the guardian of the child attending the NF&DBKA training course.