We think it’s a great idea for beginners to ground themselves in systems thinking right from the start of their beekeeping journey. That said, this course is designed for beekeepers with several years’ experience. You’ll need a working knowledge of bee biology and a general familiarity with common beekeeping terms and practices in order to make the most of the concepts we share.

It does not! Our priority in this course is to help you to build the skills you need to determine which practices work best for your bees. Our Resilience Library does include some resources around implementation, but our focus here is what to do (more specifically, how to know what to do!), not how to do it. If you’re looking for hands-on help, drop us a line! We’re happy to help direct you towards technical, hands-on beekeeping resources.

Sadly, we cannot. Because colony loss is a systems issue, the stressors our bees face are sometimes beyond our control. This means that even the most thoughtful, the most considered, the most airtight management plan can’t guarantee that your bees will survive. Our goal with this course is to help you understand the big-picture factors that impact your bees, and take steps to reduce exposure and increase resilience. We do firmly believe that systems-savvy beekeeping improves outcomes over time. But colony health is a complex thing. There is no silver bullet, and there are likely to be losses along the way.

One of our central goals is to build towards a future where honey bees manage pests and pathogens —successfully— on their own (aka without beekeeper intervention; aka treatment-free). In this course, we cover steps beekeepers can take to decrease disease exposure, increase bees’ access to natural, health-supportive behaviors, and reduce dependence on miticides. While treatment-free beekeeping is the ultimate goal (and does support bee health in places like southern Mexico), in high-density, miticide-dependent contexts, going treatment-free is rarely the first —or only— step towards raising mite resistant bees. We encourage beekeepers to pursue collectively-minded strategies to establish widespread mite resistance. In some contexts, this requires strategic use of organic miticides. In others, it does not.

The examples we draw from in this course are centered in beekeeping experiences in the U.S. and Mexico, but the frameworks we share are broadly applicable. Industrialization impacts beekeepers in much of the world, and systems thinking supports resilience everywhere. On top of that, gathering with a diverse group gives us all more opportunity to learn from each other.

If you are joining us from outside the U.S., be sure to indicate this on your intake form so we can prepare course materials accordingly.

All that said, we are in the process of preparing a Spanish-language course geared primarily towards folks working with European-scutellata hybrid bees (also called ”Africanized bees”) in Mexico and Latin America. If you feel this course would be a better fit for you, make sure to sign up for our email list, and keep an eye out for this offering.

Great to hear you’re interested! Two options here. You can sign up for our email list, and we’ll let you know when our next set of dates rolls around. Or, you can coordinate with beekeepers in your area and sign up as group.

Beekeepers signing up in groups of 8 or more can propose their own set of dates.

Our first three modules are teaching modules. These consist of 30 minutes of teaching time, an action step we work through together, and time for Q&A and discussion.

Our final module is discussion-based. In this module, we’ll troubleshoot the action steps you’ve decided to pursue and make sure you’re set up to put resilience into practice.

Not a problem! You can always catch up with the recording. Session recordings and accompanying action steps will be available on our class Notion page shortly after each session concludes.