Is £65 a good price to pay for a beginners bee keeping course?

Afternoon all,

I received an email from my tutor for my RHS Level 2 course & she received the following email re. beginners bee keeping course:

'This is the info for our beginners course

The course will start on Tuesday 18 of March and will run for 4 weeks on consecutive Tuesday's.

It will be held at the Corbell Centrre, Glovers Grove, Ruislip, HA4 7BY.

The evenings will start at 7pm and run for approx 2 Hrs each night.

This is the theory part of the course and the practical will be held at our apiaries on Thursday evenings and on Sunday mornings between 11am and 1pm.
We will give more information when you attend.

The cost of the course is £65 which is payable on the first night.
This fee also includes one years associate membership giving access to all the club activities.'

I was just wondering if this is the amount one would expect to pay to learn about bee keeping? If it is I think I will go for it!

Many thanks,

Samuel

Yes, that sounds fairly normal. The main thing is that you get some hands on experience opening hives.

that seems like a reasonable price if the information is good, but there's no guarantee that will be the case. have you spoken to anyone else who has taken the course? my experience (rather limited) with beekeeping associations has not been particularly positive, but that could well be unique to my region. my impression is that most are content with high-intervention frame beekeeping and will teach the same. I'm not at all fond of that approach, so I would personally be a bit wary. that said, I've done work trade for a roughly equivalent sum for a single four-hour beekeeping class and didn't feel taken advantage of.

tel jetson wrote:that seems like a reasonable price if the information is good, but there's no guarantee that will be the case. have you spoken to anyone else who has taken the course? my experience (rather limited) with beekeeping associations has not been particularly positive, but that could well be unique to my region. my impression is that most are content with high-intervention frame beekeeping and will teach the same. I'm not at all fond of that approach, so I would personally be a bit wary. that said, I've done work trade for a roughly equivalent sum for a single four-hour beekeeping class and didn't feel taken advantage of.

My opinion, based upon taking the intro to beekeeping course with the Cardiff Association, mirrors this. The amount of info I got made it worthwhile and the insurance you get as part of the Association is pretty handy I suppose. Prepare to raise someone's ire if you bring up the subject of natural/non-conventional beekeeping though. There are natural beekeeping courses you can attend.

Check out Biobees.com see what they say about UK courses.
David