Czech beekeeping clubs: beekeeping summer camps

Beekeeping throughout the year
Many beekeeping clubs work with children during the entire school year but then there is a two-month summer holiday when they pause their activity. And it is at the exact same time when we need to collect honey, feed our bees and do important varroa treatments. There are a lot of practices we need to teach our children and so little time. Because trying to arrange weekly meetings, while everyone wants to go on vacation, spend time with their friends, etc., is impossible.
Instead there is a different approach we can take to solve this, as the title suggests; beekeeping summer camps.

Activities for summer camps
We have already talked about the most important things to do in summer. But now we also have time for more unusual activities, which we might not be able to try within our short club meeting window.
Often the favourites are making wax foundations, balms, honey candy, baking honey gingerbread.

Start your own camp!
This might sound really hard to do, but you don’t have to go all in the first year. You can start only with a few children. Or if they all live close enough it could be a suburban camp and you won’t need to worry about accommodation.
Maybe there are already some nature focused camps near you so you could offer to prepare a programme for one day to show them the fascinating world of bees. Maybe someone will want to know more and they will join your (or any other) beekeeping club.

It means a lot
I got most of my inspiration for this article from the camp LŠMV in Nasavrky, which I personally attended multiple times.
Looking back, I start to understand it gave me much more than I used to realize. Spending a week with beekeepers of the same age allowed us to exchange a lot of knowledge and experience. And our friendships lasted for years so I am grateful for the chance to be part of this and I hope we will see more beekeeping camps in the future.

Lukáš Loukota
Young Czech beekeepers, 16 years old
Photos by Marek Matulík, Young Czech beekeeper, 24 years old