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Click on an individual name to view their Bio, or else scroll down:
Conference Presenters
(all confirmed)
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Larry Adams, urban beekeeper
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For the last 15 years, I have worked in the Lindsay Heights/ Walnut Way neighborhoods,A 110-block area in central Milwaukee, by investing resources to nurture the restoration of a historically prosperous African American neighborhood.
Since its start in 1998, Walnut Way Conservation Corp. has continued to grow.
The mission has been to involve the total community:
to document the oral traditions of elders, to reduce crime, to help residents
with pre-ownership training, to host regular meetings for community
development, to provide job-training for adults, to expand rain gardens to
manage storm water and to offer educational and recreational opportunities for
the youth.
Larry Adams has recovered bee swarms, installed and split new
hives and advocates for policies to allow beekeeping in the city.
I had been introduced to beekeeping as a youngster by my grandfather in Birmingham, Alabama. In 2000, I took Will Allen’s Growing Power beekeeping course and two years later I was teaching the course.
Today we produce about 900 pounds of honey each year right here in Walnut Way.
We teach each other and learn from one another. This is the language of the bees And this spirit drives us in our Walnut Way neighborhoods.
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Nezaa Bandele has been an active member of the natural food movement in the Detroit community for over twenty-five years. She has owned several restaurants providing healthy food and teaching cooking and nutrition classes. Currently she is studying to receive her license to practice Clinical Nutrition with a Registered Dietitian designation.
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Oliver Couto
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Oliver Couto has been keeping bees for seven years and is a member
of the Toronto Beekeepers Coop. He is a frequent lecturer on apitherapy, healing with bee products. Oliver is currently producing The Sacred Bee,
a three part documentary that unites the world's major religions through the paradigm of the bee.
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Brad & Kerri Dahlhofer,
B. Nektar Meadery
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B. Nektar Meadery was founded in 2006 by Brad and Kerri Dahlhofer, with the help of their good friend Paul Zimmerman. Brad has been an avid homebrewer since 1998, making beers, meads, ciders and wine for his own enjoyment. When Brad and Kerri got married in 2005, he made a mead to toast with at their wedding and received great reviews from the guests. Jokingly, he said that he’d someday open a meadery. Paul, a long-time friend and fellow homebrewer, soon began making meads along with Brad in the Dahlhofers’ basement. Their meads quickly began winning awards at homebrewing competitions.
In the summer of 2006, Kerri was laid-off from her job. While sipping a glass of vanilla cinnamon mead made by Brad, she thought, “why not try to sell this?” It was then that the three decided to take their mead making to the next level. In the spring of 2008, Brad too fell victim to layoffs, and the three worked night and day to prepare for their opening. After nearly two years since its inception, B. Nektar finally opened it’s doors on August 2, 2008 (National Mead Day).
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Keith M. Lazar, certified beekeeper
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Keith Lazar has been keeping bees in Oakland, Wayne and Sanilac Counties, Michigan for 10 years. He is past president of SEMBA (Southeastern Michigan Beekeepers Association). Keith mentors other beekeepers and sells woodenware for hives.
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Ken Schramm
fruit grower and meadmaker |
Known as the godfather of mead in the US, Ken Schramm restored a few neglected fruit trees into a backyard orchard that now bears more than 100 different varieties of apples, cherries, peaches, plums and berries at his home in Troy, Michigan. Shortly after receiving The Complete Joy of Home Brewing as a Christmas present from his brother in 1987, Schramm made a batch of Raspberry Barkshack Ginger Mead and a love affair began. Since then he has mastered the full range of mead, from simple honey and water infusions to luscious combinations with his many fruits and refreshing spritzers infused with both exotic and homegrown herbs and spices. From a review of Schramm’s The Compleat Meadmaker, “a book that will serve the home craft with authority for years to come. Indeed, it was a joy to read. The hardest part was resisting the temptation to put it down and run out to buy some honey.”
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Candyce Sweda
biodynamic beekeeper
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Candyce Sweda’s interest in bees began as an eight year old sitting with her sister in a field of clover near their house
The bees were so plentiful in those days that we couldn't go barefoot outdoors without stepping on a honeybee. I don't think I ever heard a more contented or beautiful sound, one that I still love today when I sit on a chair outside my hives during a honey flow and listen to that beautiful hum.
I wanted to start hives for many years but lived next to a house where someone had a terrible reaction to bees stings, so I contented myself to talk to Al Bzenko at the Detroit farmers market for years. One day he told me to come out to his house and pick up some extra equipment, to quit talking and start walking with the bees. I did. That was eleven years ago. I just did everything by trial and error and asking Al. Then I became involved with SEMBA, met Roger Sutherland and began to attend the bee workshops given by Ed Nowak. My real calling came when I attended a biodynamic beekeeping conference with Gunther Hauk. I have just joined the board of Spikenard Farm and have committed myself to the work of creating sanctuary for the bees.
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Michael S. Thompson
farm manager and co-founder of the
Chicago Honey Co-op
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Michael Thompson started beekeeping as child in Southern Kansas and when he moved to Chicago in the 1970s, he placed two hives on a neighbor's rooftop. He worked with Gene Killion as an Illinois state bee inspector and started teaching beekeeping informally when he was 25 years old. Michael developed the still going strong beekeeping program at Garfield Park Conservatory in 2001 while working there as horticulturist and community gardener.
From 2002-10, Michael was one of several beekeepers that installed eight beehives in downtown Chicago: on City Hall, on the Chicago Cultural Center and at Gallery 37 for the Arts. The Chicago Honey Co-op maintains these hives, giving the honey back to the city where they sell it in their gift stores to support cultural programs. The shared goals of this cooperative are to support a self-sufficient business, produce tasty healthy food and pass on experience through neighborhood job-training.
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Julianna Tuell
pollination ecologist
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Julianna Tuell, a Michigan native, studies pollination ecology in the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
My research interests are based on the idea of working towards sustainable crop pollination through the integration of both managed and wild bees. Specifically, I am interested in how changes in human land use impact bee communities and the pollination services they provide.
She is currently working on three projects: determining the extent to which landscape context affects the success of habitat manipulation for increasing crop pollination; evaluating pollinator diversity in three different biofuel cropping systems; and testing different native plant seed mixes for their eventual use in field borders to attract pollinators in agricultural landscapes. Previous work included a three-year study of the native bee community of blueberry and the evaluation of 43 native flowering perennials for their attractiveness to bees (www.nativeplants.msu.edu).
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Rich Wieske began keeping bees nine years
ago as a way, or so he thought, to have inexpensive,
naturally produced honey for his meadmaking.
Two hives in a friend's garden grew into
80 hives in the city of Detroit and a couple
of dozen in adjacent suburban neighborhoods.
Rich teaches beginning beekeeping in three cities.
One of his greatest joys is
to watch former students become
bee addicted and take their beekeeping
in new directions.
Rich is a strong proponent of furthering
beekeeping as part of Detroit's
sustainable farm movement and fostering
relationships between urban, suburban
and rural beekeepers. He is a member of
a dozen local and national beekeeping
organizations and
actively lectures in community settings
and on the conference circuit.
His current pet projects: developing a
living bee museum in Detroit, and a
queen rearing program in southeast
Michigan.
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When people ask me why I keep bees in Cleveland, I tell them that I can’t help it. The bees found me. It’s something I have to do. After years of thinking I would keep bees some day, I finally acted on it. I got my first package of bees in 2006. I find that taking care of bees teaches me to slow down and pay attention to nature. I notice what’s blooming and what’s happening to weather. I wonder how all of it will affect my bees.
I had the idea of keeping bees in the city and thought about possible rooftops for hive placement. I thought about community gardens. I drove around the city and looked at potential sites. Then I discovered an urban farm on the city's east side, which became home to my bees.
The bees have become a point of interest to volunteers and visitors at the farm. They are fascinating to watch. I often pull up a chair and sit with them. They are predictors of upcoming storms. They let me know what is in bloom by the types of pollen they are bringing in. This summer, I will start apiaries in other parts of the city as well. I believe they help to restore a balance in the city
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