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is the co-founder of one of North America’s largest bee conferences, Hive Life https://www.hivelifeconference.com/ , is the founder of Tennessee's Bees and has been keeping bees in North Central Tennessee for 20 years.
Kamon keeps 300 hives with his wife Laurel. Kamon and Laurel also have filmed hundreds of educational videos to help new and veteran beekeepers around the world keep their bees successfully. Though Kamon does 99% of the talking, Laurel has been Beekeeping for 16 years and is an invaluable part of their Business Tennessee’s Bees LLC. Tennessee’s Bees specializes in quality Bee Genetics, Pure Tennessee Honey, and Honeybee Education. Their videos can be found on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkoAuqRak
Kamon currently has 50,000+ beekeepers that follow him on Youtube.
comes to us from his 27 acre farm in Bloomfield, MO, which he manages for wildlife and pollinator habitat. Cory and his wife Jaime own Stevens Bee Company where they select for mite resistant VSH stock. Cory is a Past President of Missouri State Beekeepers Association, and earned a MS in entomology from University of Lincoln, Nebraska. He was certified as a Master Beekeeper by EAS in 2013, and trained by Sue Cobey in 2014 to instrumentally inseminate queen bees. He slips bees into random conversation with strangers, and annoys his wife by constantly talking about bees.
has 31 years as a contractor and structural claims specialist. At the age of forty he developed a fascination with honey bees. He discovered beekeeping after assisting his brother who is also a beekeeper, with the live removal (cut out) of a bee hive in an old furniture warehouse. In 2010 armed with his knowledge of construction and his newfound fascination with bees he began removing and relocating feral bee colonies from commercial and residential structures along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. As of June of 2022, the number of cut outs he has done total approximately nine hundred and fifty and swarm catches total approximately five hundred.
Randy typically keeps forty to fifty colonies. His family, including himself, his father and his brother, keep approximately two hundred and fifty colonies total. He conducts studies in much of his work such as mite count and disease studies in feral or otherwise chemically untreated bee colonies. He video records much of his work and shares this work through social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok to educate, entertain and inspire current and future beekeepers. His work can be found on most large social media platforms under the channel name 628DirtRooster with the tagline “Where Hobby Beekeeping Is a Way Of Life”.
Randy along with his wife Elizabeth are continuing to grow their beekeeping business by recently adding a subsidiary named Coastal Grove Bee Works which will focus on honey sales and a ladies apparel line.
is a 14 year old beekeeper from NW Missouri. Her journey began in 2017, when her family started their apiary and business, known as Hitch Hive Honey. Natalee quickly found an interest in beekeeping and continued learning about bees. She started a YouTube channel with the help of her parents, in 2020, called “Beekeeping with Natalee.” Natalee really enjoys grafting queens, which has led to nearly 1000 grafts in the last few years. Natalee has many goals that she hopes to accomplish, including almond pollination in CA and being the youngest person to complete the Master Beekeeping program from the University of Florida. She is excited to see where her passion for bees takes her!
Bees have been a passion of mine for over 20 years, but that passion was never fully realized until I became the lone bee wrangler for a group of Benedictine monks at Saint Joseph Abbey in Southeast Louisiana, about 50 miles north of New Orleans. It was there that I began seeing bees in a different light, a marvel of God's creation.
As I had every intention of becoming a monk, and I spent over 12 years discerning that vocation, the prayer life seeped into my everyday life, and this greatly influenced my beekeeping practices.
As the fledgling Abbee Honey Operation at St. Joseph was just beginning, as well as my Youtube channel about the bees at the abbey, the flood of 2016 hit, causing over 33 million dollars in damage to the abbey and washing away the 30 hives we had. I had to make the decision, to call it quits or move forward. Well, I chose the harder route and aggressively began building up colonies by doing removals, making splits, and catching swarms. And God blessed the proceedings. We went from zero hives in 2016 to over 200 last year. This year we scaled down to 150 which is where I want to stay.
As I said earlier, I discerned the monastic life for over 12 years, but the vows I will be taking at the end of this September will not be religious vows. Instead, they will be marriage vows as I will be marrying Mona whom I met from my Youtube channel. Thank you Jesus!
Topics I will be speaking on:
Habitat Program Director, Elsa works one-on-one with cooperators on all of our projects. She provides the expertise on everything from site preparation to management. There's not a question that she can't answer! Elsa lives in Missouri with her husband Jeff and dogs, horses, and goats.
Bernie Andrew's best advice to novice beekeepers is don't follow his example. Back in 1972, Andrew and his brother-in-law "thought we'd take up beekeeping as a hobby," Andrew said. "We did everything wrong that we could do." But they learned quickly and persevered in the hobby that Andrew, now on his own, has been stuck on ever since.
"We are the largest female employer in Western Illinois," Andrew said. "All worker bees are sterile females. They do all the work. All we do is rob the honey from them." At one time, Andrew Honey Farm had 225 colonies with 30,000 to 40,000 bees per colony. Taking care of the bees was a full-time job nine months of the year for Andrew at his peak production, but the average hobbyist with a handful of colonies may spend eight to 12 hours a year working with the bees. Bernie will be speaking and sharing anecdotes about his OVER 50 years as a beekeeper.
A life-long nature enthusiast, gardener, & wild-crafter, Tina is also a beekeeper of 10 years. She and husband Tim, operate on a small scale homestead and own Friends Hill Apiary near Quincy, IL. Her favorite beekeeping activities aside from inspecting, are catching swarms, teaching, & demonstrating. Her primary goal is to share inspiration and to educate about the value of our interconnection with nature.
Tina's topic will be: sharing pollinator plants and herbs with the bees and ways to incorporate them into all-natural hive products.
Buzzed Aster Apiary of New London, Missouri is co-owned by best friends Skylar Anderson and Katherine Westhoff. They are entering year 3 of their beekeeping journey! Skylar is Buzzed Aster’s founder and passionate leader. Her brain can accumulate bee knowledge like none other. She is a small business owner in Quincy, IL and New London, MO (x3), wife, and mom of 4 busy kids! Katherine began her bee adventure by simply saying “yes,” to having a hive on her property, but jumped in quickly with both feet (gloves?) and hasn’t looked back. She is a social worker, wife, and mom of 3.
If you are just starting your beekeeping journey, or thinking about it, join the women of Buzzed Aster for some practical start up tips and a basic beekeeping crash course.
Mississippi Valley Beekeepers Association Inc. couldn't be more excited to have such a great line-up of speakers coming to grace our stage at the 2023 ISBA Summer Conference.
Mississippi Valley Beekeepers Association
P.O. Box 223, Quincy, Illinois 62306
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