An interactive beekeeping class will teach community members how to extract honey from backyard beehives.
Partnering with the Alachua County Extension Office, the UF Bee Unit, located at 2895 SW 23rd Terrace, will offer a beginner beekeeping course Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon.
The course will teach community members how to manage, maintain and extract honey from healthy beehives.
Alachua County Commercial Horticulture Extension Agent Tatiana Sanchez will host the interactive course, where participants will wear bee suits, handle live bees and use microscopes to inspect diseases in beehives.
Sanchez said the class will help the state’s bee population since warm weather and pesticides at this time of year can be harmful to the production of beehives.
“The idea is to provide information that will help beekeepers with specific tasks at specific times in the year,” Sanchez said.
Ray Goldwire, a backyard beekeeper and the historian of the Gainesville Area Bee Club, is one of about 100 members to meet the first Thursday of every month to participate in educational outreach seminars for beekeepers.
Goldwire said although the drought in Gainesville this summer has been detrimental to a successful honey-bee season, there are many ways to avoid a dying beehive — including informing nearby gardeners of the beehives so pesticides don’t inhibit their growth.
“Beekeeping in Florida is very important,” Goldwire said. “But the ones that have it as a hobby help pollinate the surrounding area and create local, non-pesticide-contaminated honey.”
