The Welsh Beekeepers’ Association (WBKA) is the national support organisation for beekeepers in Wales. It is a registered charity (number 509929) managed by a board of trustees supported by various officers, all of whom are volunteers.
Founded in 1943, WBKA is the umbrella organisation for 19 local associations across Wales. Representatives of these 19 associations, and specialist members, form the WBKA Council which meets three times a year.
The WBKA works to support its member associations, specialist and individual members by:
developing co-operation amongst beekeepers and other bodies, including Welsh Government and other national associations and bodies
improving the standard of bee husbandry by supporting the beekeeping education system in the UK.
We hope our website gives you an insight into the ways in which we support the objects of the WBKA as set out in our Constitution – the encouragement, improvement, advancement and promotion of beekeeping to provide a benefit to the public and the environment throughout Wales.
The bees can do it, so can you! Aiming to raise perhaps half a dozen queens to use for re-queening or making splits, we look at three straightforward approaches that require little fiddling or additional equipment: queenless nucs, the Demaree method, and the Miller method.
Dan grew up with beekeeping around him, earning pocket money by clipping and marking queens. Having spent 15 years working in large companies, he returned to the family beekeeping business in Devon in 2005, expanded the business and built a brand new Honey Farm as the centre of honey production, queen raising, and teaching activities.
Dan holds the National Diploma in Beekeeping (NDB), is a BBKA Master Beekeeper, and is an examiner for the BBKA and NDB examinations. He is a regular lecturer around the UK on practical beekeeping. He wrote some of the BBKA’s Course in a Case training courses, has contributed to the BBKA’s Liquid Gold and Swarming videos, and co-authored the BBKA’s Healthy Hive Guide book. He has just published Using Apideas, a manual for queen mating nucs.
He is a member of the Bee Farmers Association, and has been a Trustee and Chairman of the International Bee Research Association (IBRA), and Chairman of the NDB Examination Board.
