STUDENTS at the Western Australia College of Agriculture (WACOA), Denmark, are doing their bit to help the world's declining bee populations by building and revitalising old hives.
As part of the Certificate II in Agriculture Bee course, Year 11 and 12 students learn how to open and re-assemble a beehive, carry out routine bee husbandry, assemble and maintain beekeeping components and extract and bottle honey.
WACOA Denmark teacher David Morrell, who has been a beekeeper since he was 15 and taught the course for several years, said the college was proud to exclusively offer the unit of study which, previously, was an elective subject.
When the college upgraded its dairy facility about five years ago, its beekeeping enterprise moved into an old shed that had previously been used for pasteurising milk.
"Before that we didn't have a proper facility to work in," Mr Morrell said.
"We refitted it with recycled shelving and since then we've been able to run the course at a much better standard and undertake food handling in an appropriate facility."
Mr Morrell said the VET course had been around for about 10 years.
"One of the competencies is to renovate bee hives, so we recently advertised asking the community for old derelict hives," Mr Morrell said.
"However we have to be careful that the hives don't have foulbrood, which is a nasty infection of the baby bees, because that is incurable except with gamma radiation.
"We sterilise the boxes, brush them out with a wire brush, give them three coats of paint and they're ready to go again.
"The project is assisting students to attain their competencies and hopefully instil in the community how vital bees are to the environment and agriculture."
In recent years, the dwindling population of wild bees has been well publicised due to their important role as pollinators in the world's ecosystems and in agriculture.
However Mr Morrell said WA beekeepers had been quite fortunate in that they didn't have to deal with some of the pests and challenges which beekeepers in other parts of the world faced.
"There have been some problems with a type of pesticide that is very detrimental to bees but in WA most of our beekeepers run on the outer edges of agriculture and the exposure to those sorts of chemicals isn't too bad," Mr Morrell said.
"By farming them we can provide the bees some protection from pests and diseases that have decimated their wild populations."
The college is expected to produce about 150 kilograms of honey this year which will be sold to the parent and student body.
While acknowledging that professional beekeeping wasn't a huge industry in WA, Mr Morrell said there were a lot of people who had taken up beekeeping as a hobby or as a sideline business.
"Last I heard, nine of my students had gone into the industry and although that doesn't sound like a lot, you need to take into account that it was initially more of a hobby course in its first few years and those people still chose to work in the industry," he said.
"From what I've witnessed, there are also a lot of FI-FO people getting into it where they might run 100 or 150 hives."
WACOA - Denmark recognised World Bee Day last Thursday.
- If you wish to own a new hive or have an old or unused hive refurbished, you can contact the college administration on 9848 0200.
