Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
I'm sure that the scheme is designed to be helpful and try to get apprentices established. I doubt very much whether the host would have employed an apprentice to get work done - it takes a lot of additional time to teach people on the job and if the host was after cheap labour he/she would have tapped into the pool of experienced beekeeping assistants available, many from E Europe. One guy I know helped his apprentice by donating sites to her.
If I take a complete novice , show him the same procedure on 10 hives, is there honestly any manipulation in Beekeeping that he couldn't then copy.?
That's actually how I learned, a Turkish commercial beek in France was my mentor, I inspected 115 hives that first day he did 200. I was simply confirming queen and no queen cells.
How much would an experienced beek want paying for servicing 200 hives ?
It took him 5 or 6 hives before he had one with queen cells after I'd seen them I did 2 with him watching and then off on my own. It took him less than n hour to train me for the next 8 hours work. That was day one, the discrepancy would be much worse as more general knowledge was gained.
It's not rocket science.