About this Event
"Join Us for a Buzz-Worthy Beekeeping Event: Learn, Connect, and Celebrate Bees!"
We are excited to host nine nationally renowned and respected beekeepers who will present topics to increase your knowledge and skills in the bee yard.
Save the Date: March 29, 2025
Time: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Where: Pathfinder Park Event Center, 6655 State Hwy 115 Florence, CO 81226
Join us for an exciting beekeeping event featuring:
- Presenters from across the country, in person and on Zoom
- A silent auction
- A honey swap
- A honey competition
- Over 60+ vendors
- Overnight camping for those who want to stay longer
Tickets:
- $60 for non-members
- $50 for members (Use your member promo code to get your discount!)
Don't miss out on this fun and educational day dedicated to all things beekeeping! 🐝
SPEAKERS
Don Hall: Topic: The Do Nots in Beekeeping
Don's fascination with honey bees began as a young child on the banks of the Brazos River in Texas. Over the past 18 years, he has honed his skills as a beekeeper and performed honey bee removals across multiple states. Today, his mission is to inspire and guide hundreds of people each year to embark on their own beekeeping journeys.
Don works with his wife, Wendy, operating Burley Bees in Canon City, Colorado, for the past nine years, producing local honey and bees along the Arkansas River. This passion has evolved into extracting feral colonies to diversify the makeup of their apiaries. Don strives to produce more local and productive colonies through the use of feral genetics.
Don and Wendy are proud to be a part of the Colorado Beekeeping Community and are always amazed at the diverse group of people that beekeeping brings together.
Jim Massucci - Presentation Title: Managing for Honey
Jim is local to the St. Louis area and is both a honeybee researcher and a sideliner. As a honeybee researcher, Jim ran some of the largest field trials ever to develop a new varroa-control product. He recently retired to focus full-time on his honeybee business where he is up to ~200 production hives and 70 nucs. He has written about his transition to a full beekeeper in BeeCulture magazine and contributed to The American Bee Journal as well. He continues to consult and run field trials for Greenlight Biosciences in their effort to bring an RNAi-based varroa control product to the market.
Web Page: www.jdmbees.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Randy Oliver: Mite treatment with the sponge method
Randy Oliver sees beekeeping through the eyes of a biologist, building a small commercial beekeeping enterprise in the foothills of Northern California. His sons now manage around 1500 colonies for migratory pollination and produce queens, nucs, and honey, freeing Randy to engage full-time in beekeeper-funded research projects. Randy analyzes and digests the scientific research and is in touch with beekeepers and researchers from all over the world to not only broaden his own depth of knowledge but to figure out best management practices for beekeepers everywhere, which he then happily shares through his various articles in bee magazines, speaking engagements, and on his website
www.scientificbeekeeping.com
Thomas D. Seeley: Bee thirst!
Thomas D. Seeley is the Horace White Professor in Biology at Cornell University. His research focuses on honey bees' behavior, social life, and ecology. He has been an avid beekeeper since he was 16, hence for nearly 50 years. He is the author of several books on bees, including Honeybee Democracy (2010), Following the Wild Bees (2016), and The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of Honey Bees in the Wild (2019). For fun, besides beekeeping, he enjoys bee trapping (catching swarms in bait hives) and bee hunting (finding wild colonies by bee lining). He lives in Ithaca, New York.
Fred Dunn: The Amazing Honey Bee, A Closer Look.
Fred is a honey bee educator focusing on backyard small-scale beekeeping. He shares the intricacies of bee biology and management primarily through his YouTube Channel: "Frederick Dunn," and Podcast: "The Way To Bee." He manages more than 43 colonies of honey bees on his rural Pennsylvania property and has been obsessed with bees and their secrets since 2006. As a Cornell University Master Beekeeper, Fred uses scientific methods to improve management practices and evaluate tools and hive configurations across a broad spectrum. Photos and video sequences are at the core of his presentations.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FrederickDunn
Podcast: https://frederickdunn.podbean.com/
Bryan Zavada – The Flexible Use of Resource Colonies in My Apiary
Bryan Zavada has been keeping bees since 2014. Bryan manages approximately 75 colonies around the Denver metro area. He and his wife, Jennifer, run a small beekeeping business called Flower Street Farm in Lakewood, Colorado. They sell honey and products of the hive at two local farmer’s markets and local events and provide education, hive consultation, colony management, nucs, queens, and education to both beekeepers and non-beekeepers. A former educator, Bryan has been active in several local clubs and is currently Vice President of the Colorado State Beekeeping Association and the chairperson for the Sustainability Committee.
Jeff Horchoff – Beekeeper for the Monks
As a beekeeper for over 40 years, my journey, like all beekeepers, has had many peaks and valleys, but the one consistent aspect throughout both the good times and not-so-good times is that bees have never ceased to amaze me. It is this wonder of the bee that continues drawing me along the road I am traveling with them, learning about both myself and the bees as I go. And now, I find myself the lone beekeeper/bee wrangler for a group of Benedictine monks at St. Joseph Abbey, tending their flock of 150 or so bee hives while keeping supplied the stock of honey to their Gift Shop from the efforts of their bees. What a blessing it is to have been placed here by God to do His work.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1wFvLYx357lX69TA4AYoNg
KT Thomson-Honeym CSBA master beekeeping program.
KT grew up farming in Eastern Colorado, is currently the chemistry professor at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado, and has taught beekeeping classes and workshops on a variety of topics (including her nutritional research). She is a past president of Eastern Colorado Beekeepers and currently serves as the Colorado State Beekeepers Association (CSBA) Treasurer & Master Beekeeping Program Director. KT has superintended the CSBA Big Money Honey contest for four consecutive years and is currently working to add honey judge training to Colorado that will benefit those who administer and judge contests as well as those who are interested in competing in honey contests.
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61551956662463
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Pathfinder Park Event Center, 6655 Colorado 115, Florence, United States
USD 55.20 to USD 60.00
