Available in three formats:   Audio MP3 Download: $15 Audio Compact Disc: $15 Video of PowerPoints with Synchronized Audio Download: $18

Duration: 1 hrs 25 min

Biodynamic and Practical Bee Care
Christy Hemenway

Rudolf Steiner had many important things to say about the mechanization and industrialization of beekeeping. Learn why top bar hives makes sense for people-and for bees! We will talk about equipment, methods, and philosophy. We'll learn why natural beeswax - made by bees, for bees - is a very good idea for all of us. We will lay the groundwork for those considering "taking the plunge" into natural beekeeping.

Christy Hemenway  What did bees do before beekeepers? Unable to find logical answers to what seemed a simple question, Christy Hemenway launched an investigation of her own into what, or more likely who, might be behind the growing problems with honeybees. She came to the conclusion that with bees, less is more, as in: less human interference equals more health for the honeybee.

In 2007, Christy founded Gold Star Honeybees to advance a beekeeping system known as the “top bar” hive - the original movable-comb, managed beehive. The most important feature of a top bar hive is that it lets bees make their own beeswax honeycomb in a natural, chemical free way. This means beeswax made BY bees, FOR bees!

Working to build the top bar beekeeping community, Christy Hemenway offers classes and workshops nationally to aspiring beekeepers, the concerned public, and farmers and gardeners. She particularly enjoys teaching Top Bar Beekeeping 101 - a Weekend Intensive class where students not only learn the how-to’s of stewarding their bees, but also come to understand the connection between bees, and our food system, and our own well being. The importance of bees to human health, the health of the planet and to all of nature becomes quite clear!

Christy has been published in The Northeast Organic Farmers Association periodical, The Natural Farmer, with the essay entitled Shifting the Paradigm – Towards More Natural Beekeeping. She also writes a beekeeping blog for Mother Earth News magazine.

Christy encourages people to think outside the box and reminds us, in the words of John Muir, that "when one tugs at a single thing in nature, one finds it attached to the rest of the world."

Gold Star Honeybees maintains membership in the Green Business Network, the Maine Organic Farming and Gardening Association (MOFGA), Maine Businesses for Sustainability (MBS), and the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) as well as many local and regional beekeeping associations.