Beekeeping 3D Skill Share

Beekeeping 3D Skill Share with Olka Forster & Hana' Maaiah

The 3D series is a multidimensional workshop series designed for B.I.P.O.C. (Black, Indigenous, & People of Color) to deepen skills in specific farming and land stewardship practices in a culturally relevant, supportive, and joyful environment.

Bees are our ancestors, pre-dating human existence on the Earth by tens of millions of years. When we tend to bees on land, they teach us about living in reciprocal communities, building resiliency through creative response, and how to dance and make sweet treats. This hands-on workshop will cover the basics of managing a backyard hive. Together we will learn:

• The hextory of bees
• Honey bee biology
• About pests and diseases that impact the hive
• How to source bees, hive materials, beekeeping equipment
• Where and how to install a backyard hive
• How to connect with a bee mentor
• Resources for affordability
• About the honey extraction process

Language: The instruction will be delivered in English.

Cost: The sliding scale is $15 -100. Please think generously - what could be more important to contribute to than living food, land sovereignty, and skilled farmers spreading love and knowledge?!

The workshop is designed to be a culturally relevant and safe space that centers Black, Indigenous and People of Color (read why here).

Registration closes Sunday, June 9th at 10pm Eastern Time.

Presenter(s):

Olka Forster is a farmer, bee-tender, storyteller, advocate, and nomad in the lineage of the Fulani griots. She has been an environmental justice advocate and anti-police & state brutality activist for over a decade and is the founder of the Black Moon Podcast, a space that interrogates the topic of Black death and aims to remediate the harm done to our collective psyches from watching Black people die. Olka is currently in the process of an ongoing leap of faith - manifesting a reality of collectively owned Black-stewarded land that honors queerness, indigeneity, and spirit in all things.

Peace! My name is Hana’ Maaiah (she/her/all pronouns), and I am serving as the Food Systems Manager at Soul Fire Farm. I am a Palestinian-Jordanian farmer, bee-tender, educator, friend, organizer and nature lover. As a nature-nerd, I study environmental science and environmental agriculture, and am in love with farmings’ intersections of energy, climate, race, politics and spirituality. I believe that regenerative communal food is a way to heal our planet, ourselves, and each other while sharing food, remaining curious, and forming strong alternative communities. When I am not farming, you can find me in the woods, by a river, and literally hugging trees.

About the organizer

Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered training farm committed to ending racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. Our food sovereignty programs reach over 10,000 people each year, including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.