About
HCBA
About
HCBA
About
HCBA
Teaching ourselves how to help the bees and each other.
hayscountybeekeepers.com
2022 World Bee Day
Natural Beekeeping Webinar
RECORDINGS
Sponsored by:
Natural, Sustainable Beekeeping is increasingly popular:
Do you have the tools and information you need to
join into the future of beekeeping?
Watch the video recordings at the bottom of the page to increase your knowledge about Natural, Sustainable Beekeeping
SPEAKERS & TOPICS
"FALLING IN LOVE WITH BEES" by Jacqueline FREEMAN
Modern agriculture treats bees as chattel and wants all bugs destroyed. This attitude prevents us from cultivating a deeper understanding of their true nature. How can we create reverent and respectful relationships with bees and encourage the tiny life forms to fulfill their life mission??
We enter the enchanting world of honeybees through story, sound and videos that help us understand how they sense the world and to recognize the wisdom and practicality of their daily tasks. When we work in partnership with a bee colony, our shared Oneness reveals the interconnectedness of the world.
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Jacqueline Freeman owns a biodynamic farm in southwest Washington that is home to thousands of bees and native pollinators. The farm and land embody a loving and respectful relationship with Nature which they have shared with many people. On her farm, colonies of bees live in different types of hives including tree trunks, hand-woven skeps, Freedom and Schiffer hives, round Warres, and in the walls of her house where a colony independently created their bee home,
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A writer, artist, and biodynamic farmer, she sees the world from Nature’s perspective. She is author of a groundbreaking book on working respectfully with bees and nature, “SONG OF INCREASE: Listening to the wisdom of honeybees for kinder beekeeping and a better world.” The book is available in many languages. Jacqueline and her dear friend, Susan Knilans, recently co-wrote her second book released in 2022, “WHAT BEES WANT: Beekeeping as Nature Intended.”
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She encourages us to have a different relationship with bees, to look beyond seeing bees solely as honey-producers, and instead recognize the significance of their deeper role in nature as pollinators and wise members of Nature's community.
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She teaches and travels internationally. Her website, www.SpiritBee.com, has videos of her working in the midst of thousands of bees, free of protective equipment, celebrating the caring and considerate ways humans and bees exist in harmony.
"RAISING QUEENS IN HORIZONTAL HIVES" by Dr. Leo SHARASHKIN
In addition to producing honey, you can multiply survivor-stock colonies for your own use and for sale. Successful treatment-free apiaries rely on disease-resistant colonies, which are hard to find for sale, so breeding your own becomes a necessity AND a business opportunity even for a small-scale natural beekeeper. Rear even a few queens using simple time-tested methods, and you'll never have to buy bees again. Horizontal
hives can simplify many procedures, and you can choose from several natural, chemical-free methods - some of which go hand-in-hand with honey production.
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Dr Leo Sharashkin is a full-time natural beekeeper and founder of HorizontalHive.com. He is editor of "Keeping Bees With a Smile" and "Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives", comprehensive books on natural beekeeping. He writes for American Bee Journal, Bee Culture, Mother Earth News, and other major publications. He homesteads in the Ozarks in Southern Missouri, catching wild swarms and keeping bees in low-maintenance Layens horizontal hives. He holds a doctorate in Forestry from the University of Missouri and teaches natural beekeeping at his apiary and across the US and internationally. His website www.HorizontalHive.com includes free hive plans and free guides.
"APITHERAPY FOR HEALTH" by Dr. Stefan STANGACIU
Dr Stefan Stangaciu will be joining us live from Romania to share with us the best of his over 30 years experience on the healing properties of the beehive products, including beehive air. His fascinating presentation will help you understand how a variety of bee products, correctly collected, processed and used, can make us healthier and stronger, but also how they can be used to increase our life span, as well as our external and internal beauty. He will touch on the following topics:
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Beehive products against viral diseases, including Covid
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Why Beekeepers live longer
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Medicinal beekeeping vs. "industrial" beekeeping
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Beehive Air Therapy - an extraordinary "tool" for Api-Tourism
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Dr Stangaciu has organized, co-organized or has been a lecturer on Apitherapy for over 30 international conferences offered in over 50 countries.
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He is President of the Romanian Apitherapy Society, President of Apitherapy Consulting & Trading International Ltd., President of the German Apitherapy Society, General Secretary of the International Federation of Apitherapy, Honorary President of the German Apitherapy Society, and Council Member in the Apitherapy Committee of the World Chinese Medicine Society.
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He is also moderator of the Apitherapy Discussions E-mail Lists ( Google Groups in English, Spanish/Portuguese, French, German, Romanian), the creator of the Apitherapy Networks in English, French, and German in Whatsapp.
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His website, www.Apitherapy.com, has a wealth of information relating to Apitherapy.
"HOW-TO GUIDE TO SUSTAINABLE QUEEN REARING FOR ALL BEEKEEPERS" by Ang ROELL
Ang Roell (they/them) of They Keep Bees will share strategies for simple and effective queen production and hive management in the Comfort Hive. Ang will discuss research recently completed with Anarchy Apiaries and UMass Amherst in simplified queen rearing methods, selection strategies and "walk away split" production. Ang will share the practices for Comfort Hive Queen production used at They Keep Bees, and leave ample time for Q&A about all things Queen Bees.
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Ang Roell is a white, nonbinary/trans person of predominantly Ukrainian & German heritage.
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Ang currently resides in Western Mass (unceded Nipmuc land) where they co-operate They Keep Bees, a queer led beekeeping business.
- They Keep Bees raises adaptive queen bees and spearheads research and educational projects that aim to build a more collaborative and regenerative beekeeping industry.
- Ang and a small collective of beekeepers started the Boston Area Beekeeper Association and the Boston Tour de Hives, a bicycle powered apiary tour of the greater Boston area.
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Their work includes cultivating queen bees who are adaptive to ever changing climates and supporting organizations in making lasting change by shifting power structures & creating effective collaboration.
"BEEKEEPING & CONSCIOUSNESS" by Les CROWDER
We see honey bees act as if they are little separate bees that somehow coordinate their behavior as if they were not separate individuals but more like cells of a multicellular organism. In this presentation, Les explores what factors help them cooperate so well, and how beekeepers can use knowledge of these factors to better coordinate our interventions in the beehives we work/dance with.
At the end of the presentation, he will briefly ponder on how we as humans consciously and or unconsciously behave as a super-organism, and what factors are involved in our coordination.
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Les is an authentic Bee Whisperer, an expert beekeeper, professional educator and Head Teacher at the Bee Mindful Beekeeping Academy in Austin, TX, where he and Nathalie B. teach Natural Beekeeping.
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He started beekeeping at 14, and is both a biologist and a true veteran of the beekeeping world. Earlier in his career, he worked for a commercial beekeeper with 4,000 hives. Ever since, he has looked for ways to eliminate toxic inputs in the hive.
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He now is an internationally recognized expert in Natural Beekeeping, and specializes in Top-Bar Hives. He wrote “Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health”, an authoritative source for Natural, Mindful Beekeeping and a very popular book all over the world.
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He has been teaching highly popular Natural Beekeeping classes domestically and abroad for over 35 years (both in English and Spanish), and now offers a Professional Apprenticeship and Intensive Workshops at Bee Mindful (www.Bee-Mindful.com)
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Every Monday at 7:30pm Central US Time, he co-hosts a free "Chat With The Mindful Beekeepers" with Nathalie B., where they answer beekeeping questions from all over the world (see past recordings on Instagram #BeeMindfulHoneyFarms ) via ZOOM...
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Les was a honeybee inspector in New Mexico.for 5 years, the President of the New Mexico Beekeepers Association multiple times, and the President of the Hays County Beekeepers Association, a Natural Beekeeping club in Austin, TX (join their Facebook group for Natural Beekeeping advice).
"HORIZONTAL TOP-BAR HIVES & COMMUNITY OUTREACH"
by Nathalie B.
Nathalie B. will discuss the tremendous advantages of Horizontal Top-Bar Hive beekeeping for Natural, Sustainable Beekeeping for all, and how it can also be used for Community Outreach in the US and around the world. She will make the case for what she has called “The People’s Hive Of The Future”, and how it is accessible to people of all abilities, age, height and means, offering an elegant and simple, yet powerful way to connect us all through our bees, while reclaiming our nature.
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Nathalie B. is a Master Beekeeper from Texas A&M University, and the host of "The Natural Beekeeping Corner", every first Monday of the month, on the popular beekeeping podcast "The Hive Jive".
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She has designed a simple yet efficient way to transition Langstroth frames into top bar hives without cutting through live comb, and has redesigned Les Crowder's hive into "The Bee Mindful Top-Bar Hive" (free plans at www.Bee-Mindful.com/plans)
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A native French speaker and polyglot, she was hired in 2019 by the Congolese government to design and lead their country-wide beekeeping training program for trade schools, for which she spent over 6 months in the Congo setting up Horizontal Top-Bar Hive Teaching Apiaries and designing a Natural Beekeeping Training Program in French.
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Her passion to make Natural beekeeping inclusive and accessible to all means she constantly creates, leads, and tirelessly volunteers for community outreach programs, including the Shamba Ya Amani Congolese Refugee Farm of Peace beekeeping project and WINROCK Beekeeping Programs in Western Africa.
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A seasoned speaker, she also leads Bee Mindful (www.Bee-Mindful.com), a beekeeping education and professional consulting company that provides services in and around Austin, TX, where she works with Les Crowder on promoting Horizontal Top-Bar Hives as "The People's Hive Of The Future"
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She teaches highly popular Natural Beekeeping classes domestically and abroad (both in English and French), and now offers a Professional Apprenticeship and Intensive Workshops at Bee Mindful (www.Bee-Mindful.com) with Les Crowder
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Every Monday at 7:30pm Central US Time, she co-hosts a free "Chat With The Mindful Beekeepers" with Nathalie B., where they answer beekeeping questions from all over the world (see past recordings on Instagram #BeeMindfulHoneyFarms ) via ZOOM...
"ADVENTURES IN DIRT AND HONEY" by Sarah Red-Laird
Sarah Red-Laird envisions a future where kids frolic in pastures of flowers, buzzing with bees, alongside profitable family farmers and ranchers. She is currently leading a group of collaborators to create this reality through the “Regenerative Bee Pasture” project. By regenerating soil through increasing plant diversity, incorporating animals, eliminating or reducing tillage, always leaving the soil covered (with plants), and leaving living roots in the soil, farmers and ranchers are increasing rainfall infiltration and reducing soil erosion, sequestering carbon into the soil, and building life beneath the soil surface which increases nutrient density in our food. As this movement jettisons ahead, Sarah wants to make sure that bees are completely considered. In this talk, she will share details on how her focus has transitioned to include not just beekeeping but also soil building, why this is important, and how you can take part in her vision for the future.
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Sarah Red-Laird is the founder and Executive Director of the Bee Girl Organization (BGO), a nonprofit with a mission to educate and inspire communities to conserve bees, their flowers, and our countryside.
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BGO projects are focused on bee habitat research and education, and kids’ programs.
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Sarah is a graduate of the University of Montana's College of Forestry and Conservation with a degree in Resource Conservation, focused on community collaboration and environmental policy.
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She serves as the “Kids and Bees” program director for the American Beekeeping Federation.
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To see her commitment to good policy and community collaborations realized, she also serves as president of the Northwest Farmers Union, and is a past president of the Western Apicultural Society.
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When she is not tirelessly working with bees, beekeepers, kids, farmers and ranchers, and policy makers, Sarah loves to read historical fiction, ride her vintage 10-speed, run in the hills, and see new places, things, and people.
“UTILIZING WORKER BROOD TO CONTROL MITE POPULATIONS: A NOVEL MECHANICAL CONTROL FOR VARROA?"
by Dr. Juliana Rangel
In this pre-recorded segment, Dr. Rangel will present the recent work of her student Taylor Reams, M.S., who is investigating a mechanical technique for Varroa control based on starvation of worker brood.
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Born in Colombia, South America, Juliana obtained a B.S. in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution in 2014 from the University of California, San Diego.
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In 2010 she obtained a Ph. D. in Neurobiology and Behavior from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, working with Dr. Tom Seeley. She was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow from 2010 to 2013 working with Dr. David Tarpy at North Carolina State University. In January 2013, Juliana became Assistant Professor of Apiculture in the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in College Station, TX.
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Her research program focuses on the biological and environmental factors that affect the reproductive quality of honey bee queens and drones, the behavioral ecology and population genetics of unmanaged honey bees, and the quality and diversity of honey bee nutrition in a changing landscape.
"COMMON SENSE NATURAL BEEKEEPING" - Kim Flottum
In this live presentation, Kim Flottum will describe many practical ways every beekeeper may start to incorporate natural beekeeping techniques and hives into their management practices without becoming a purist, as described in his latest best-seller beekeeping book
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After receiving a degree in horticulture from UW Madison, Kim Flottum worked four years in the USDA Honey Bee Research Lab, studying pollination ecology.
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After that, he spent two years raising acres of fruits and vegetables, where bees played a large role.
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He brings this experience, plus nearly 20 years of writing and editing articles for beekeepers in the monthly magazine Bee Culture.
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He is the publisher of multiple books on honey bee pests and diseases, marketing, queen production, beekeeping history, beginning beekeeping, and the classic industry reference, "The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture".
"INTUITIVE TREATMENT-FREE BEEKEEPING" - Jen Rassmussen
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Jen teaches Intuitive Beekeeping Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii.
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She has selectively honed her philosophy of treatment-free beekeeping through years of personal experience and study.
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Her love and acceptance of the natural world, and her fearless and inquisitive nature inspire her intuitive, treatment-free style of beekeeping.
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Jen’s teachings are great for bee guardians in all walks of life to help create an understanding of bee biology and how it relates to pest management and disease prevention.
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She explains the awareness needed to care for bees without the use of treatments and medications, offers encouragement and inspires new ideas and creativity.
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As a mother and farmer, she initially became interested in beekeeping as a way to provide a sustainable food source for her family.
"R&D of Virus-Resistant & Varroa-Resistant Bees"- Daniel Weaver
Daniel Weaver from BeeWeaver Apiaries will discuss the latest findings of his work with Genformatic LLC and the BMC Genomics project
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Dan Weaver is literally the James Bond of chemical-free bee breeding
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He was the first apiarist to rear a new breed of disease-tolerant bees
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In 1995, Weaver and his father split from the family business and founded BeeWeaver Apiaries with the goal of breeding a bee that could tolerate diseases spread by varroa mites without the help of chemicals.
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To do this, the Weavers simply let nature run its course and left their colonies untreated. “We employed the James Bond method of queen rearing,” Weaver says. “Live or let die.”
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The Weavers are working to perfect their bees and the bees’ future generations, while benefiting from a national notoriety about their varroa tolerant and virus resistant bees that has landed them on major social media networks
"The Soft Bond Treatment-Free Method"- Dr. John Kefuss
Dr. Kefuss advocates what can be called “black hole beekeeping”, and will discuss what that entails in a free form interview with Nathalie B. from Bee Mindful
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Dr. John Kefuss is an internationally renowned American beekeeper, entomologist and researcher living in France
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He is well known for developing the “Bond Test” as a strategy for selecting for resistance to Varroa mites in honey bees, and for "Keeping Bees That Keep Themselves"
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This “Live or Let Die” method taken from the movie of the same name has garnered a lot of attention from beekeepers and researchers alike.
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It incorporates apicentric beekeeping in many respects, letting the bees literally “bee” themselves.
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He also developed a more nuance approach to treatment-free beekeeping he calls "The Soft Bond Method"