NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The Beauregard Parish Sheriff’s Training Center will be abuzz for several Monday evenings as the Southwest Louisiana Beekeepers Association and LSU AgCenter present their fourth annual beginning beekeepers class.
Backyard beekeeping is growing statewide and nationwide, with 17 clubs around Louisiana compared to three or four a decade ago, AgCenter parish agent Keith Hawkins said Friday. The number of beekeepers has easily doubled over that time, with 696 currently registered with the state Department of Agriculture and Forestry, said Allen Fabre, the state’s administrative coordinator of nursery and apiary programs.
Both men said one reason is that people are worried about pollinators. Bee and butterfly populations have been declining for more than a decade, and more than one-third of the world’s food crops depend on pollination by insects and other animals.
“There’s quite a few pollinators that don’t make honey, but the honeybee does give us that extra benefit,” Hawkins said.
Fabre said Louisiana doesn’t distinguish between commercial and hobby beekeepers, but 18 of those in Louisiana have at least 300 hives - what he thinks of as a commercial venture. Even a few hives can produce lots of honey in Louisiana.
“We average between 80 and 90 pounds per colony. That’s a tremendous amount of honey” - third or fourth nationwide, even though total honey production is well down the list, he said.
Louisiana hives are so productive because invasive Chinese tallow trees produce lots of nectar, Fabre said.
“The majority of people in the ag industry do not like Chinese tallow trees at all because they grow everywhere and anywhere and grow so fast. People who fence roads and pastures are continually fighting them,” he said. “But for a beekeeper, they’re like manna from heaven.”
Hawkins said nearly 350 of Louisiana’s beekeepers are on his “beemail” list. About 18 to 24 people usually take for the classes, he said, but he won’t know how big this class will be until people register Monday.
He says it runs from 6 to 9 p.m., usually for about four weeks, with topics including bee breeds, bee biology, bee hive and accessories, getting started, management for honey production and pollination, products of the hive, off-season management, honey bee disorders, parasites and nest invaders, and Louisiana honey plants. The class also visits the bee yard run by the club’s president, Richard Hebert.
Hawkins said he and the southwest club worked up a class outline and slides based on “First Lessons in Beekeepping” by Keith Delaplane, who earned a master’s in entomology at Louisiana State University and is now apiary specialist at the University of Georgia.
“It’s an easy read - a thin book with lots of pictures. Very understandable,” he said.
He said he’s provided the class materials to seven clubs around the state. He doesn’t know how many of them are giving similar classes, but they include at least Cenla Beekeeping, based in Forest Hill, and the Lake Area Beekeeper’s Club in Sulphur, because both have sent him lists of their graduates.
He sees the classes as the first stage toward creating a master’s beekeeper program like the one in Texas.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.