Are You Interested in Beekeeping?

The Nepean Beekeepers are a local club that maintain an apiary of honey bees at the Nepean Creative and Performing Arts High School in Emu Plains. They use the apiary and associated beekeeping equipment to demonstrate and teach beekeeping to its members and interested people and provide forums and one-on-one opportunities for new beekeepers to seek advice from more experience beekeepers.

Formed in 1978 with the first meetings held on a private property in Llandilo, they moved to their current location at the then Nepean High School, where Nepean Beekeepers shared the school’s apiary with their students who were learning beekeeping.

The club currently has 85 members, with 400 interested people requesting their newsletter. They meet the second Sunday of the month, starting at 9:30am, at the Club Apiary at the Nepean Creative and Performing Arts High School.

The cost to join the Amateur Beekeepers Association of NSW is $40 per year and $20 per year to affiliate with the Nepean Beekeepers, with an optional $20 per year for public liability insurance covering beekeeping activities. Membership fees are paid through an online system via the ABA website at www.beekeepers.asn.au.

The Nepean Beekeepers welcomes visitors, people thinking about the possibility of beekeeping, people who have decided to keep bees and want to know how to achieve this, new beekeepers and past beekeepers returning to the hobby.

They also have a swarm patrol system, accessible through the ABA website where the general public can input their postcode, and this will give them contact details of a local beekeeper who may be able to remove the swarm.

For information about the Amateur Beekeepers Association of NSW, visit https://www.beekeepers.asn.au/. You can also contact the Nepean Beekeepers Club Secretary by email at nepean.secretary@beekeepers.asn.au.