‘Adopt’ a Hive Beekeeping Workshop Series
Are you interested in learning more about honeybees and beekeeping? Do you care about pollinators and want to learn more about creating a pollinator habitat? Love the taste of raw honey and want to try some straight from the hive? Join us for our hands-on beekeeping workshop series!
Community members are invited to ‘adopt’ a beehive in return for shares of honey and other bee products, information about their adopted hive, and six hands-on honeybee workshops and events on the farm!
$350.00 price for May-October 2023
Included in your ‘adoption’:
- Information packet about honeybees, our practices and your ‘adopted’ hive
- Shares of raw honey, honeybee products and pollinator plants
- Invitation to participate in monthly (May-October) hive inspections
- Monthly (May-October) workshops and demos including planting for pollinators, beeswax prep, honey extraction and more!
- Year-end member banquet at the farm including honey and bee product recipes
Who: Those interested in learning more about honeybees, beekeeping and pollinators
When: Starting May, 2023. Workshops will be held on Saturdays, between 10am and noon
Where: Olsen Farm, Lanesborough MA
“Want to know more about your local farms, farmers and ecosystem? Olsen Farm’s “Adopt a Hive” program is a wonderful way to get a fun, friendly introduction to beekeeping, from hive to honey and much more. Not only do you get up close and personal with loved and healthy, thriving and diverse bee species and their hives, you get access to Chris’s and Kristen’s expanding, real-time knowledge about bees and keeping them, from cultivating habitat to catching swarms to collecting comb. The farm is a lively yet peaceful place, with an abundant landscape and animated characters (like chickens and farm dog, Aspen); learning gardens which provide for the local community, and of course, plenty of humming hives to observe. Chris and Kristen care so much about the work they do and the land and creatures they care for. They will go out of their way to make sure you feel safe during each workshop and answer all of your questions. If they don’t know the answer right away, they’re quick to tap into their network of master beekeepers and resources to figure it out. I loved everything about this program, from doing the dirty work of hunting for Varroa mites, to the challenge of spotting queens, to the joy of seeing, smelling and tasting the nuances of honey collected throughout the production seasons. I looked forward to every workshop and getting to spend a morning or afternoon outdoors, learning and laughing with like minds and some of nature’s hardest workers.”