TENNESSEE INSTRUCTORS
Scott Venable has been keeping honeybees in east Tennessee since 2007, and completed Master Beekeeper certifications at the University of Tennessee. He is also a local inspector for the state of Tennessee. After more than two decades of active military service and numerous deployments, while helping his son get started as a hobby, he found beekeeping to be a peaceful outlet. He supports fellow veterans and works to develop their interest at every opportunity. Beekeeping requires patience, focus, calm hands, and passion, all beneficial traits for both children and veterans. He strongly believes engaging children early in the fascinating world of the honeybee enriches their appreciation of our environment and nature. He mentors new beekeepers each year and speaks at local meetings, festivals, and outreach events. He often works one on one with prospective beekeepers and curious others to provide a live, hands-on experience in his apiary in Madisonville. Scott builds most of his hive equipment, and sells honey & pollen, catches swarms and has done many cut-outs from a variety of structures. He is a member of the Tennessee Beekeepers Association, and the Monroe County & Cherokee Beekeepers Associations. He has served several years in elected positions for Monroe County Association, and currently serves as President.
MISSOURI INSTRUCTORS
| Pete & Susan Weaver Master Beekeepers in the making. Pete is a Commercial HVAC Senior Operating Engineer by trade and Susan is a published Children’s Book They now have a thriving apiary that continuously regenerates year after year. Pete & Susan adhere to natural organic beekeeping standards and do not use chemical treatments or antibiotics and do not sugar-feed for Winter. All is influenced by their dedication to organic standards, while pursuing USDA Organic Certification of their vegetable & cut-flower gardens in their brand-new up-and-coming Humble Bees Farm Market on 4.5 acres in Lees Summit, MO. Together, Pete and Susan believe in brilliant intelligent design behind the superculture of bees and deeply welcome curiousity. They have come to know when a new beekeeper opens a hive lid that it could very well shift their mind forever! “Humble is the Bee who works all its short life for the next generation.” quote by Susan & Pete Weaver, Humble Bees Farm LLC. |
Rebecca VanScoy Becky VanScoy has kept bees in Lee’s Summit, Missouri since 2019. She works full time in the healthcare field and became fascinated with bees after taking the “Introduction into Bees and Beekeeping” course at the local college the Fall of 2018. Beekeeping has become a great way for her to relieve work related stress and get back to nature. She enjoys sharing all the amazing things about honeybees with people in the community. She started with 2 colonies of bees in the spring of 2019 and now maintains up to 12 colonies at her home. She has a small business, Willow Bee Honey Co., selling local honey. She also volunteers her time managing a local community bee yard which has 7 colonies and is used for teaching opportunities for a local bee club. More recently she has started mentoring new beekeepers. |
Illustrator for Katy McQuaid’s “Everybody Loves Grace” 7 book children’s series. Together they are humble Beekeepers of divine majestic bees! Their story bloomed from a seed conversation with Pete’s 92 year old Grandpa who was bumbled over why his tomato crop did so poorly the previous year. After much research and investigation, Pete & Susan added two honeybee hives to the farm to “see what would happen”!Sam Crowe
IOWA
John Seiser
KENTUCKY
Richard Brothers Originally from NY, Richard Brothers has become an Eastern Kentucky transplant. Previously he 
was an active duty soldier in the Army and is now a Staff Sargent in the Army Reserves. Richard is a Morehead State student pursuing a Bachelors degree in Nursing. He and his wife own and operate Lavender Springs Alpaca in Oil Springs where he also produces locally sourced hardwood cuttingboards. He has tended hives for 7 years and is passionate about saving pollinators.
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ILLINOIS
Jack Arnolde
Tim Lindley has been beekeeping for over 40 years, starting in 1977. His beekeeping knowledge has been acquired over the years by doing hands on work with the bees as well as attending many seminars and training sessions at various locations. He has been teaching beginner’s beekeeping classes on his own for over 10 years. In June of 2016, he left his factory job of over 20 years to pursue beekeeping full time. He is the treasurer of the Illinois Queen Initiative, and has helped teach classes on queen rearing. Last fall he attended a queen and drone seminar at the University of Kentucky and earned his Queen Breeder’s Certificate. He currently has 70 hives, teaches beginner’s classes, builds his own hives, and plans to sell nucs and queens this spring and summer with bees bred from his Red-Line Purdue Mite-Biter II breeder queen.
Michael Long – Beekeeper of 12 years and lifelong resident of southern New Jersey. He recently relocated to Illinois where he continues to work with bees and beekeepers. As an active sideline beekeeper of 60 – 80 colonies in N.J. he provided pollination service to many smaller south Jersey fruit and vegetable growers. A few of the numerous education programs he participated in include Rutgers agricultural extension courses: Basic Beekeeping, Beyond the Basics, and Business Management and Marketing for Beekeepers. He was president of the South Jersey Beekeepers Association in 2011 and involved on the executive board for 6 years. He was also an initial founder and leader for 3 years in the Gloucester County N.J. 4H beekeeping program.
My path to beekeeping came from my love to grow my own food. After several years of gardening bounty I experienced a severe production loss. That was in 2004 and continued into 2006. Doing all that I could as a gardener to remedy the situation my apples revealed the problem was poor pollination. My observation was that the local pollinators the Bumble bee had all but disappeared. It was the summer of ’06 that I decided give bees a chance. I have been working on behalf of Honey bees and pollinators ever since.
Warren Norris lives in LaSalle Illinois and became interested in beekeeping in 2009. After hearing about the plight of the honey bees due to CCD and other problems, he started doing some research on them. Along with a longtime friend, Warren started to talk about starting a bee business that fall so they did. After attending a beginning beekeeping class, he was involved in helping to start an association in northern Illinois in 2010. They went from about 25-30 members the first few years to having over 70 members now.
Warren was the president of the association from 2012-2016. They got the word out to the communities and have been very successful since. He has been going out for the past 4 years giving talks on bees and pollinators to various school children for Earth Week that is sponsored by one of the sand companies in their area. He has also given talks on bees for various city garden clubs, businesses, State Parks, schools, and a master gardener’s seminar at the local community college. He has also given a talk to a beekeeping class at the Kuai Community College in Hawaii.
Warren started with two hives his first year and has grown their business to over 35 hives. He has collected swarms and performed cutouts for people all over their area. The biggest cutout they performed was on the movie set for Jupiter Accending back in 2014. The first of three cutouts they did they were able to save approximately 100,000 bees. It took them 2 ½ days to accomplish this task and to save them. By doing this, Warner Bros. company was awarded an industry “Green Award”. They went back two more times to the farm house that was used in the movie to remove more bees.
Warren believes there is nothing more fascinating than watching bees doing their work and knowing how much they help our environment and our lives.
ARKANSAS
Peter Stuckey Peter learned about Colony Collapse Disorder in 2011 and wanted to do something to help
honeybees. Beekeeping was an option. After postponing a trip to Florida to attend a local beekeeping conference, the following spring Peter purchased two hives for his backyard.
Since becoming a beekeeper Peter has continued to learn about honeybees by attending conferences and classes. He has served his local beekeeping association as President and Vice President for many years and is now the association’s Program Director.
Peter loves to talk about honeybees and share his knowledge with others. He has taught several classes on beekeeping and looks forward to many years as a beekeeping instructor.
Peter Lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, works for the University of Arkansas Little Rock, and keeps his bees in the campus garden.
Suzanne Beaman Suzanne Beaman was born and raised in Indiana, and raised her 5 children there, with her husband of 20 years. They always dreamed of Homesteading in the Ozark Hills, living a life in Harmony with Nature.
Over 30 years ago, Suzanne became Certified as a Master Gardener through Purdue University and discovered she had a passion for teaching.
She is currently a member of the VFW Auxiliary in Salem Arkansas, as well as 5 Rivers Beekeepers Club, and the 
Cherokee Village Ham Radio Club.
She encourages and empowers others to foster a healthy, self sustaining environment to restore and maintain balance to our ecosystems by Organic Gardening, Soil Testing and amendments, Composting, and various other Permaculture Practices, which lays the foundation for a stable and thriving Honeybee Environment!
Providing Abundant Native Flora for Bees and learning to maintain strong, healthy hives by pursuing responsible Beekeeping practices, is an integral part of Organic Gardening and living in harmony, with Nature.
Suzanne looks forward to promoting Beekeeping by sharing her passion, as a Life Long Learner herself, as both a Student and a Mentor.
With Nature, and the current weather extremes, it is vital to become proactive with protecting our Bees so our entire Food System stays strong, for both ourselves and for our Bees!