Michael Bush "Bee Camp"

[susan rudnicki]

This just went up on Organic Beeks Yahoo group—Michael is in eastern Nebraska.
Bee Camp

email address

Bee Camp dates: 23 May 2014 – 8 June 2014

I am trying to put together a Bee Camp. I’m not sure how much response I will get and that will determine if we proceed to do more dates or not. Here’s what I have in mind.

I was thinking I would make it open ended. Come whenever you like. Leave whenever you like. Book ahead of time so we don’t run out of resources or room, but this will allow people to fit it into their schedule or adjust their schedule for what they want to learn about. I’ll provide food. You may have to help cook it. I will probably have to pitch some tipis, I’m thinking one for the men and one for the women and I have a few smaller ones we could pitch for couples. You could stay in a RV if you want to bring one. No real hookups, but we can probably manage an extension cord. There is a “Glamping” (Glamour camping) place 3.5 miles from my house where you could stay in a tent with a queen size bed, a wood floor etc. or you could stay at a local hotel (there are three towns about 20 miles away in different directions that have hotels) if you like, out of your own pocket, and drive in every day. I am considering some other options as well.

I have a farm and a life, and a family, so I can’t do just bees all day every day. There are too many other things that need to be done, but I will be doing bees probably about four hours a day most days and then other things the rest of the day. Not that we can’t talk about bees all the rest of the time, but I will need to do other things around the farm besides just bees. I don’t want someone to feel cheated because we are hauling firewood or moving hay etc. But we would have queen rearing things to do almost every day. Outyards to check. Splits to make. Equipment to fix. Equipment to build. Equipment to move, clean up etc. Yards to move. Other things I need to be doing besides bees that I would want help on: construction, hauling wood, moving from my old house, planting, watering, mowing, feeding horses.

There would not be any formal presentations, just doing bee work with me and then other work with me. Of course I will try to explain what I’m doing all along. Since I run a new batch of queens every week, once the queen rearing is in full swing (four weeks after it starts) you would see every step of queen rearing in the course of a week during queen rearing season.

If the camp fills up and there is enough interest, I would like to do this full time. I would have to quit my job to do this, so I actually need to make enough to pay the bills. I don’t want to undersell it but I also don’t want to limit access to people who don’t have much cash. I’ve been poor and I know what a burden it can be. So here is my plan (I’d be happy to hear feedback if you

For now I think I will start taking names for the scheduled dates and see if the calendar fills up enough to be worthwhile quitting my job to do more.

Michael Bush

email address

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