Senior Beekeeping Exams

Exams 2024

Exams will be held in the Spring. We will post the precise date and location once it's made public.

Practical and Academic exams

There are two main exams in the senior cycle:
  • Beemaster Exam
    • This is a single practical apiary exam  taken in your own apiary.  It is the same as the Senior Apiary Practical exam, so we recommend that you take this exam instead since once you pass the Beemaster exam, you are deemed to have passed the Senior Apiary Practical. For information on the syllabus click on the Beemaster tab here.
  • Senior Exams
    • The rest of this document will focus on this

Senior Study Group

Each year, pandemics permitting, we start an Senior study group in autumn, once the beekeeping season quietens down.  We go through old exam papers and review each other's answers to find the optimum answer for each question. Even if you decide at the end not to sit the exam, you will learn an enormous amount so it's definitely worth joining in. You have to have passed the intermediate exam as a prerequisite and there's a small charge for photocopies of the various notes (€5). For the past couple of years it's been held one evening a week in the Teagasc office in Mell, Drogheda.

Note that the material covered by the study group is well-suited for the needs of the Beemaster exam.

Exam Information

 The Senior cycle is composed of four exams:
  • The Written Practical exam - covers theory of practical beekeeping
  • The Scientific exam - covers the scientific side of beekeeping
  • The Apiary Practical exam - you are examined in your practical proficiency with your own bees, including how your apiary is managed. This is the same as the Beemaster exam: if you have already passed this, you are granted a pass in the Senior exam although the converse is not true. In other words, rather than take the Senior Apiary Practical exam, it makes much more sense to take the Beemaster exam instead.
  • The Microscopy exam - the current syllabus is very poor and does not reflect the requirements. A critical point that it omits is the need to use Rex Sawyer's pollen identification book and his methodology to identify pollen grains.

FIBKA's syllabus page has the information on the four exams - click on the "Senior" titles, and you can access past papers too (you have to have your FIBKA ID to access these).