Our popular ‘Intro to Natural Beekeeping’, ‘Natural Beekeeping’ and ‘Stingless Beekeeping’ courses ran from 2013 to 2019, in various Australian locations across New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.

In that time we ran over 30 courses and taught over 800 students the ways of the bee.

Warré beekeeping is a bee-centric, natural method that aims to care for bees as the priority, allowing them to control their own environment. It is a gentler approach than conventional beekeeping, resulting in healthy contented bees and superb raw honey.

Past courses

Intro to Natural Beekeeping Course

Our one-day introduction course was facilitated by Tim Malfroy, Australia’s only full-time professional natural beekeeper (Malfroy’s Gold). This workshop covered bee-centric beekeeping, bee biology, different types of hives (with a focus on the Warré hive), and how to get started.

Tim covered the amazing social behavior, biology and intricate world of the honeybee, giving a solid grounding on keeping them in an ethical, sustainable manner. This course also included a visit to an urban Warré apiary and a hive inspection.

Natural Beekeeping Course

Facilitated by Tim Malfroy of Malfroy’s Gold, this course was a two-day masterclass on the basics of the bee-friendly, organic, small-scale Warré style of natural beekeeping. The course focused on a style of apiculture that is exclusively designed for the small-scale beekeeper. This course included a visit to the Milkwood Warré apiary, based at Buena Vista Farm, and a hive inspection.

Students learned the ins and outs of sustainable beekeeping in general, and left this course all ready to take the plunge into keeping their own bees.

Stingless Beekeeping Course

This one-day intensive course on native beekeeping was led by Tim Heard, a world-renowned expert in Australia’s native, stingless bee species. This course covered hive design, splitting and honey extraction, with bonus sessions on the details of native bees and how to encourage them in your garden.

Participants left this course with a competent working understanding of tetragonula (formerly known as trigona, now re-classified) colonies, as well as many other native bees and the role they play in our ecosystems. They also learned how to open and split a tetragonula hive, how to extract honey, and which native pollinators tend to pollinate which sorts of plants.

Student reviews

How you can learn natural beekeeping with us now

We have loads of natural beekeeping articles and how-to guides freely available in our online archive of useful things. Our Milkwood book also has an entire chapter dedicated to natural beekeeping, with plenty of photos to help you along the way.