New Free Course: Natural Beekeeping for Beginners

HeatSpring is launching a brand new free course on Natural Beekeeping for Beginners. Honeybees are essential to healthy ecosystems and a healthy planet. Through their regular feeding habits, honeybees pollinate plants so they can reproduce, make fruit, and produce all the edible, medicinal, and functional crops that humans and animals rely upon. 

Despite their importance to our economy and our ecosystems, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows that the number of honey-producing colonies within the beekeeping industry declined 4% in 2020. 

Bees are facing many existential threats, many of which stem through negative impacts of commercial beekeeping practices and commercial agriculture. One such example is commercial honey bee pollination. According to IBIS World’s August 2021 Beekeeping Industry Report, an estimated 2 million colonies of bees (or 140 billion honeybees) are rented out every year to commercially pollinate crops. Moving the bees and their hives leads to significant stress for the bees as well as other unintended consequences like negative effects on local biodiversity and harm to wild pollinator species. Luckily, there is another way. Natural beekeeping practices work to restore the health and stability of bees and their hives. 

In this free course, longtime beekeeper Courtney Cosgriff teaches an overview of natural beekeeping. Courtney has spent over 10 years stewarding honeybees, teaching diverse audiences, and advocating for pollinator conservation. In this free course, students will learn about beekeeping with a lens that considers their wellbeing above their utility. 

Students can expect to learn an overview of the following:

• Anatomy of the beehive and the various types of bees that make up this superorganism
• Stories of some of the earliest beekeepers
• The modernization of beekeeping and what the industrialization of beekeeping means for our honeybees
• Initial considerations for those looking to care for bees in their own homes and local communities 
• Products of the hive

For those inspired to take action, Courtney will also be teaching a Natural Beekeeping Intensive, which covers the information in much more detail as well as comprehensive practical skills and knowledge needed to host beehives, whether professionally or personally. This course launches Fall 2022, but you can still learn more and sign up today.

Natural Beekeeping for Beginners is part of a new subject matter area from HeatSpring called “Nature-Based Solutions” coursework. This new area continues to evolve and grow with our community. Education focused on regeneration in alignment with nature is a part of the HeatSpring mission to build and power a cleaner future through education. Have feedback or ideas? Drop us a line!