Your Cart is Empty
TVBA's "Natural, Treatment Free Beekeeping & Top-Bar Hive-Building Workshop " was a wonderful success! --Here's a BIG *Thank You!* to Les Crowder & Nathalie B. from Bee-Mindful, as well as to our Workshop Committee for all your efforts putting together this full-day event attended by about 60 people.
Our Natural, Treatment-Free Beekeeping Workshop: Organic Practices for Honey Bee Health, was a SUCCESS!
This workshop provided attendees with the essential knowledge and strategies to create a sustainable, resilient, and thriving bee yard, all while eliminating the need for treatments and keeping operating costs to a minimum.
Les and Nathalie brought top-bar kits for purchase at cost so you could build your own top-bar alongside the pros.
The presentation topics were:
Natural Beekeeping Principles (LES)
Through a deeper understanding of the nature of bees, we’ll provide mindful guidance on enhancing bee health, producing cleaner comb and honey, and achieving success without the use of harmful chemicals or organic poisons.
Sustainable Integrated Pest Management Strategies (NATHALIE)
You'll learn how to harness honey bee biology and use proven Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques to naturally mitigate pest pressure and keep your bees thriving in their presence.
Leveraging the Varroa Mite Life Cycle (LES)
We will discuss the biology of the mite and show how we can leverage that knowledge to mitigate its impact on the colony.
Horizontal Top-Bar Beekeeping: An Intro Guide (NATHALIE)
We'll explore the benefits of horizontal top-bar beekeeping for small-scale and backyard yards as a management style that's arguably Better for the Bees and the Beekeeper's Back and Budget (BBBBBB).
Top-Bar Hive Making Demo and Hands On Practice (LES and NATHALIE)
This is the maker part of the workshop: learn how to use literally a handful of boards to cut and assemble horizontal top-bar hives and flex hives (Langstroth to TBH adapters) in less than 2hrs with the free easy DIY plans. You will have the option to purchase a precut, Amish handcrafted hive kit to take home with you along with the knowledge to make more on your own.
For those interested in touring the apiary and digging into hives, we took time out of the top-bar construction portion of the workshop and went and played with bees.
What a Success & a Blast this was!
View this event on Facebook & share it with your friends.
Full-Day Natural, Treatment-Free Beekeeping Workshop.
Presented by Les Crowder & Nathalie B. of Bee Mindful.
We learned about "Organic Practices for Honey Bee Health" as well as Top-Bar Hive Beekeeping and enjoy lunch and fellowship with like-minded beekeepers.
The workshop also included the on-site a demonstration of a ground-breaking Langstroth/Top-Bar Combo-Kit!
Get to Know our Instructors:
Visit the Bee Mindful Website
(This data can be found via the link below on the Bee Mindful website).
As Master Beekeepers, Les Crowder and Nathalie B. have over 65 years combined expertise in Natural Beekeeping, Education and Professional Beekeeping Services.
They currently manage over 400 colonies in roughly 40 yards, a lot of which are Horizontal Frame-less (Top-Bar) Hives, as they are much easier on the Bees, and Beekeepers' Backs and Budgets.
Always kept organically and 100% treatment-free, most of the bees in the Honey Farms are either rescued from cutouts or swarms looking for a home and rehabilitated for at least a year before being used for production.
Les Crowder
Visit the Publisher for more information on Les Crowder's trend-setting book.
Biologist and world-renowned Master Beekeeper, Les is a 55+ year veteran of the beekeeping world, a widely recognized expert in natural beekeeping and a past Chief Apiary Inspector for the state of New Mexico.
Throughout his career as a beekeeper, he has always looked for ways to eliminate toxic inputs in the hive, starting with antibiotics and now miticides. He has been keeping bees in Langstroth and Top-Bar Hives his entire life, both as a hobby and as a business.
Earlier in his career, Les worked for a business with 4,000 hives in New Mexico, and was the President of the New Mexico Beekeepers Association multiple times. He also was a honeybee inspector there for 5 years.
A true honey bee expert and whisperer, Les has been teaching highly popular natural beekeeping classes domestically and abroad for over 35 years (both in English and Spanish), and has written the world-renowned book “Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health”, which has sold and continues to be sold all over the world.
Nathalie B.
Enjoy a 2020 Interview by VoyageAustin with Nathalie B.
Nathalie B. is an Ohio-State MBA Grad and a Texas Master Beekeeper with over 13 years experience in all hive styles and close to 400 colonies of her own.
She owns Bee-Mindful.com, a full-service beekeeping business, where she and Les Crowder offer comprehensive beekeeping apprenticeships and workshops in sustainable and natural beekeeping, professional AG exemption services, as well as affordable, practical horizontal hives and treatment-free bees.
Nathalie is a contributor to Bee Culture magazine, the founder of the first natural beekeeping club in Texas and of the World Bee Day Natural Beekeeping Webinar, and the co-host of the popular beekeeping podcast, “The Hive Jive”.
She has served as President, VP and Director of various Texas Beekeeper Associations (HCBA, TCBA and TBA), and as Chairman of the Real Texas Honey non-profit.
Nathalie is passionate about community outreach and volunteering, and has created training programs and teaching apiaries for refugees in Congo, Nigeria, and Texas, as well as Youth Scholarship Programs, donating and leveraging many simple, cost-minded, easy to manage and sustainable horizontal hives in the process.