A Letter from Alex Tuchman
Director, Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary
Dear Friends,
Do you ever feel lonely or isolated in your approach towards beekeeping and land care? Have you tried to enter clubs, meetings, or events where it is clear that you are the odd one out?
For 20 years now, Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary has provided opportunities and pathways for people to “find their tribe” with others who seek health and vitality in deep communion with bees, who are in service of their needs, and in right relationship with the landscape. But hold onto your plumose hairs, because this September 25–27th, we are part of the organizing team of the biggest-ever gathering of natural beekeepers in North America, on the international stage of the Learning from the Bees conference, which we will host here in Floyd, Virginia, at the Floyd EcoVillage.
You need to be there! I’m telling you, this is going to be sweet! The lineup of speakers and participants who are joining together is miraculous.
We have witnessed for years how, even in the natural beekeeping community, there are factions of people content in their way, who rarely cross-pollinate with others once they have found the clique that gives them some sense of belonging. You have your Top Bar beekeepers, Layens beekeepers, Sun Hive beekeepers, tree-trunk beekeepers, re-wilding folks, treatment-free folks, etc., each with their own way, some thinking that their way is truly the only right way to do it.
But honeybees show us a path from separateness and isolation to wholeness and interconnectedness. Learning from the Bees is an invitation to be warm and social, to break the mold, and to build a new one together that includes a wide diversity of helpful perspectives!
The 2026 iteration of Learning from the Bees will be our first attempt to help each of these groups to feel at home, included, and welcome under one roof, where the common ideals that connect us all will help us build a hive together, which is much stronger, healthier, and well-provisioned to address the challenges that we—and the bees—are currently facing. We truly need each other, and the bees need us to be a more cohesive community.
This conference has been held in Europe three times already, with great success in catalyzing the natural beekeeping movement there. The Americas are a different landscape on many levels, and we haven’t yet managed to create a gathering place where everyone is welcome…until now. We are already inviting folks who have registered for the conference to start sharing, joining us for conversations with keynote speakers and workshop presenters, and giving chances to meet each other and to come to the conference, having made a bunch of new friends already!
One intended outcome of this conference is to develop our community further towards the creation of a “Post-Conference Bee Network,” which is a placeholder title that holds space for what can become when we join together in September. Building momentum from this gathering, this Network is conceived of as a way of staying connected as a community, developing our capacity to share resources, advice, support, trainings, and plan future conferences. Jonathan Powell from the UK’s Natural Beekeeping Trust will lead us in exploring how we go forward together, during a closing panel discussion entitled, Are We Ready to Swarm?.
For our local community here in Floyd, we are already building collaborative partnerships with artists, beekeeping clubs, schools, nonprofits, businesses, farms, and local government, and are working to establish a public bee garden on Main Street and to incorporate Floyd as a Bee City USA in time for the conference. All this local activity is centered around our work at the Honeybee Sanctuary, but also extends into the community in so many different ways. One recent initiative, the Hive Host program, has extended our work onto local properties, where landowners who want bees but don’t have the means to tend the hives can hire a Spikenard beekeeper to care for the bees on their land and to help improve pollinator forage. Our first ever Hive Host was the Floyd EcoVillage, which now is home to over seven hives with 2.5 acres of newly planted pollinator forage. This EcoVillage is also the center where Learning from the Bees will be held and where much of the food that we’ll be eating during conference meals is being grown.
Cheyanna Bone from BeeWilder Song and Steve Rogenstein from The Ambeessadors have been absolutely incredible colleagues working on the conference’s Production Team, as this Spikenard hive hums with activities leading up to the big show. We are so appreciative of all the great programming suggestions, offers to help, and donations which have gotten us this far, and we welcome your participation in these months leading up to our gathering. I sincerely hope you can join us.
The bees are calling…can you hear it!? Let’s co-create a world where bees can thrive!
In anticipation and with gratitude,
Alex Tuchman
