It's official, I'm now a member of the British Beekeepers' Association and this week I went along to the first Exeter branch Beginners' Beekeeping Course session along with another 20-30 people from around the area all budding beekeepers. The course itself runs from January to April when we'll get to meet bees for real at the apiary and our introduction is looking at hives and equipment.

For some time now, I’ve been wanting to keep bees. I’m absolutely fascinated by them and love watching them in the garden. However, has anyone noticed how few there seems to be?

I can’t claim to be a professional gardener but make every effort I can to make the garden as bee friendly as possible. So, with the bee population declining drastically, I was really keen to make 2016 my year to learn more about keeping bees - just get Christmas over with first and I would start doing some research into local courses being run and find the nearest beekeeper groups… that was the plan!