Getting Started with Beekeeping

Workshops

Getting Started with Beekeeping

Anthea van Geloven

This workshop is for the homestead beekeeper to learn everything about getting started with honeybees. I teach a style of beekeeping that is quite unconventional and certainly will contradict what you may have heard in a beekeeping club or classic beekeping book! It is important to me to put the health and happiness of the honeybees in the center of my bee tending practices and work from there with love and deep understanding. We will go over equipment needed and how to set it up. We will cover how to source your first bees. Then we will go over health checks in the first year of beekeeping. We will talk about swarming as the process of swarming is an important and healthy part of the honeybee colony. And we will touch upon preparing your hives for winter. This workshop will also include information on sources to trust and use as you begin or continue your beekeeping journey.

Teacher Bio:

Anthea van Geloven is a lover of the honeybees and has been deeply working with them for 6 years. She spent 4 years working as the farm manager of Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary and bases the foundation of her beekeeping methods on the practices taught there. Currently, she is the farm manager at Against the Grain Farm where she manages the 3 acre intensive vegetable production in Boone, North Carolina. She manages the bees at the farm and has a handful of beehives herself in addition to helping community members with their own beekeeping projects. Her philosophy is that if we understand the life of the honeybee, it’s anatomy, biology, history and social structure, then, combined with our own careful observation, we can enter into deep relationship with these beautiful insects and successfully partner with them as beekeepers.