Meet CAEP Apiary Trainee Hugh Miller

This week we celebrate, raise awareness and learn how to protect our precious pollinators! CAEP apiary trainee Hugh Miller shares a little about his training experience and what he learned about bees!

“Through pollination, bees contribute to 1/3 of the fruits and vegetables produced are pollinated by honey bees. Albert Einstein even suggested that if bees were to disappear from the earth, humans would have four years to live.

My training at Honeyland Inc. in Wolf Point,  Montana included many activities from lawn mowing the bee yards to harvesting honey.  When the hives returned from California where they were contracted to pollinate crops, we had to split the hives and prepare them to be taken to the bee yards located across Montana. I learned about feeding, medicating and adding honey supers.”

The goal of the CAEP Apiary training program is to increase the knowledge and skill level of the trainee in the field of apiary production which includes learning terminology, equipment operations, beehive nutrition, handling of beehives, surveying yards, hive management, how to extract honey, and preparing bees for winter.

“I was treated with respect and gained some invaluable knowledge. Since returning home to Jamaica, I have managed to secure several contracts to manage beehives for clients who are confident that I know what I am doing. Thanks to this program I can lift my head with that confidence.”