Does anyone know anything about beekeeping as my parents were thinking of looking into it but don't really know where to start!  It would only be a very small scale thing in their garden (if this is allowed) and they have been told that a hive can produce a LOT of honey so that needs to be considered.

Are there any specific rules and regulations that need to be followed etc etc?

I know our local agricultural college does a short course on it, I wouldn't personally put myself into the line of fire without doing that first... :-D

ETA: There appears to be a lot more to it than a days course. I've pulled up the part time courses here..
http://www.plumpton.ac.uk/courselist.aspx?PageClass=Course&DepartmentID=1&DepartmentName=Agriculture%20and%20Beekeeping

I would love to keep bees.
Just as an aside, did you know some of the best honey comes from South London/Kent areas? Urban beekeepers have it made - their bees gather all kinds of pollen from all the garden flowers. I was once given some honeycomb from a hive located on a roof in East London where the bees had gathered almost exclusively from the Horse Chestnut and Lime trees in the park nearby.

they need to get on a course, and get a mentor who will help them in the 1st year. We had hives when I was a child and it was a lot of work. We now have a guy keep bees on a corner of scrug on the farm and hes there many days a week with them. Hard work but very worthwhile.

<<Are there any specific rules and regulations that need to be followed etc etc?>>

Hi georgepig, Sam's right, they will need a mentor. If you contact the BBKA at http://www.britishbee.org.uk/  and the National Bee Unit at
https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/index.cfm they will be able to give you contact details for the local group which you need to join. National and/or group membership includes insurance for up to 3 hives--very important if you have neighbours, etc!

The BBKA offer a six week beginner course followed by about the same of hands on, in hive, experience, which is absolutely essential--in some places the course is free, but most charge around £50 now. Given that the people leading the course often have hundreds of beekeeping experience behind them, you are getting access to fantastic advice and support for a pittance, and it will make the difference between managing a hive and fluking success. Even experienced beekeepers lose their bees and these days that's a very expensive replacement. A hive can cost anywhere from £150 to more like £500, and five frames of bees and a queen could set you back £200 this year, compared to £120 last year. One of our club members has offered free bees (sorry, bad pun) to members who lost theirs last winter on the understanding that we split our colonies next year to pass them on, but our club insists on only raising the native black bee and that affects supplies, as you can imagine.

Beekeeping is absolutely fascinating, but you need help--the local groups get the regional bee inspectors in for talks on managing disease like varroa and nosema, recognising the signs that mean you need to requeen the colony, avoiding swarming and a million other things...

Bees need a good forty pounds minimum of homey stores to survive a reasonable winter, and even that is no guarantee. A hive could produce 80-100 pounds of honey, so you would get perhaps 50% of what they make. We had to feed our bees all summer last year because the weather and pollen supply was so poor, and feeding bees is an expensive.

You should know that given the cost of bees and queens, raising good queens and frames of bees is more lucrative than producing honey, but you need a lot of expertise for that.

There are some good books to read and the six week course will help your parents decide whether beekeeping is really for them--lots of people are surprised to find themselves unnerved by bees sitting on their hood :)

Good luck--and be sure to get advice from the experts.

Judy

Thanks guys, I'll pass on all that info to them.  I think they would find it quite fascinating, rather than doing it for any sort of produce for themselves.  It sounds quite complicated to me!

Good luck to them, georgepig, apiculture is like anything else--you never stop learning! Hope they take it up, we need all the beekeepers we can get.

I'd love to have bees but at the moment with 4 young kids I feel that I can't maybe commit fully so I was 'half wondering' whether someone who keeeps bees would be interested in putting a hive on our farm and then maybe I could learn a bit like that for the future? Does this happen?

yes, it certainly does, Peregrine1, depending on what you grow I imagine there would be keen interest.Contact your local beekeeper's association and they will put you in touch with members who are looking for out hives. As you say, you can learn from them at the same time. Enjoy!