Andrew Brower is a self professed “truck driver with a honey bee obsession”. Keeping bees in Harleyville, SC since 2020, this SC Journeyman beekeeper’s main passion is learning about bees and beekeeping and passing that knowledge on to others. As a founding member and past president of Dorchester Beekeepers & Gardeners he has been able to do just that. Recently, he has been working with a local sideliner to hone his queen rearing, honey marketing and nuc sales skills to add to his knowledge base.

email: dorchesterbees@gmail.com

Henry has been a beekeeper for 25 years and currently runs about 100 hives selling honey, bees wax, nucs, as well as providing pollination services.  In the past, he has sent bees to California for almonds and locally for watermelon and squash pollination.
 
Henry enjoys mentoring new beekeepers and was instrumental in starting the Spartanburg County Beekeepers Association and the Laurens County Beekeepers Association where he has served as vice president and president.  When SC hosted the EAS Conference, he served on the SC planning team.
 
Henry has won many ribbons in Honey Shows at SC beekeeper meetings and is a Certified Honey Judge.

Danny Cannon has been keeping bees since 1998 and is the owner of Bee Trail Farm, an apiary located in Lexington, SC. Raising queens and selling local honey are his specialties. He is a past President of Mid-State Beekeepers Association and a past President of the SC Beekeepers Association. Danny enjoys serving as a mentor and advocate for the beekeeping community.

Stephen Bradley (Brad) Cavin began working for Clemson University’s Department of Plant Industry (DPI) as a Plant Pest Regulatory Inspector in 2007. In 2013, Brad was appointed the Chief Apiary Inspector for South Carolina. In 2020, DPI officially began a full-time apiary inspection program. His responsibilities in this role include oversight of regulatory activities of the Clemson University Department of Plant Industry Apiary Inspection program in South Carolina. Brad conducts random inspections of beekeepers/queen breeders and investigates calls from beekeepers concerned about possible pests and pathogens. He recommends establishment of protective or restrictive quarantine as required due to disease or deleterious exotic species, and enforces the South Carolina bee laws and regulations. He educates the public by hosting discussions regarding honey bees and the laws that regulate the honey bee industry. Brad issues certificates of inspection for queen breeders and migratory beekeepers as well as certificates for exportation and importation commerce for colonies of honey bees.

Ed, SCBA Master Beekeeper, started keeping bees in 2008 and then began raising queens in the upstate of South Carolina soon after.  He manages over 150 hives in both Florida and South Carolina. Ed produces and sells queens, nucs, and local honey. Ed frequently teaches beekeeping classes and speaks at local beekeeper clubs throughout the year. 

Glenn Cook has been a beekeeper since 2018 and presently manages a small apiary for King Family Farms in addition to his own small apiary.  Glenn enjoys spending time with “ his girls” and is constantly trying to improve his beekeeping practices.

Glenn is a native Charlestonian, having grown up on the then rural community Johns Island.  He served in the US Naval Reserve as a Fleet Marine Force Corpsman.  Glenn is a Nationally Registered Paramedic, Critical Care Paramedic, and award winning Community Paramedic.  He has over 35 years of prehospital, flight, and critical care experience.  During that time Glenn has held management and education roles for both large 911 EMS services and hospital based transport teams. 

Glenn has taught beekeeping topics at local clubs and presented at the 2023 SCBA Spring Conference.

Glenn has recently been named the South Carolina state lead for Hives for Heroes, a charitable organization supporting military veterans and first responders with beekeeper training and mentorship.

MBP Master: Q&A Master Study Review – Thursday

Susan Crook, the Director of the Master Beekeeping Program for SCBA, is a Master Beekeeper who lives in Charleston, SC with her family. She serves on the Board of the Charleston Area Beekeepers Association and SCBA. She loves talking about bees, reading about bees, and mentoring new beekeepers.

Brutz English is a UGA Master Beekeeper and an internationally certified Senior Honey Judge. He has served as the chairperson of the Georgia Beekeepers Association Honey Show Committee since 2015. From 2017 to 2022, Brutz served as the program director for the Welsh Honey Judge training and certification program at the Young Harris-UGA Beekeeping Institute. He is a founding member and currently serves on the Board of the American Honey Show Training Council. Brutz has judged over fifty state, national, and international honey shows, including the Institute of Northern Ireland Beekeepers (2018), the Eastern Apicultural Society (2019), Heartland Apicultural Society (2022), the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society in Wales (2022), and Hive Life Conference Honey Show (2023), and the Great Yorkshire Honey Show in England (2023).

Steve is a third-generation beekeeper and manages around 20 colonies at his home in Simpsonville, SC. He is South Carolina’s first Master beekeeper, a Senior Welsh Honey Judge, and the headmaster of the SC Welsh Honey Judging Academy.

Steve coordinates and has judged the SCBA honey shows for many years. He is the senior judge for the SC State Fair honey shows. Steve has been teaching beginning beekeeping courses for over 25 years and gives beekeeping and honey show preparation programs to groups in several states. He is also an award-winning mead maker and received the best in show award for his mead at the 2013 EAS conference.

Susan Marie is a retired educator who has a passion for teaching the next generation about honey bees.  Susan began keeping bees in 2004 on her family’s farm in Southern Greenville County.  She soon became an active leader in the Piedmont Beekeeper’s Association teaching a number of beginning beekeeping classes each year under the mentorship of commercial beekeeper Tim Dover.   In 2016, Susan moved to Lake Keowee where she became active in the Oconee County Beekeepers Association, managed an observation hive for Keowee Elementary School, and you guessed it! Taught beginning beekeeping. In 2017, Susan was appointed the Director of the SC Master Beekeeper Program where she developed programs and organized beekeeping education across the state. In early 2021, Susan earned her Master Beekeeper certification then moved with husband Carl to what they hope will be their “forever home” near Hodges, SC and became involved with the Lakeland Beekeepers. 

Susan created and manages two bee-focused businesses: her honey bees and bee products as Susan Marie’s Bees and a bee-themed e-commerce business, Keowee Bee.    Since 2022, Susan has served as the President of the South Carolina Beekeepers Association – the first woman to do so in the organization’s 49-year history.  This year brings a fresh challenge as Susan accepted the position of Apiculture Specialist at the SC Governor’s School of Agriculture. Susan is passionate about honey bees, but she thrives in being able to share her beekeeping experience with others – especially young people.

Logan has been a beekeeper for 4 years. He and his wife Jordan work their hives together and they are raising their own brood to do the same. The economics of beekeeping and native bees have become a keener interest of Logan’s in recent years. 

Presentation description: An overview of native bees and their relatives in South Carolina and beyond. 

DAVID MACFAWN is a North Carolina Master Craftsman Beekeeper (October 16,
1997), Eastern Apicultural Society Master Beekeeper (2019), Co-Founded the
South Carolina Master Beekeeping Program, awarded 1996 and 2020 South
Carolina Beekeeper of the Year, and published over 60 articles in the American
Bee Journal, Bee Culture, and Beekeeping: The First Three Years. David is a 2021
CIPA EVVY TM Awards Book Second Place Competition Winner and has published
four books and twenty YouTube videos. He was a consultant to Bee Downtown,
an urban agricultural and leadership development organization. Here David
worked with their leadership team to create a biomimicry analysis for honeybees
to create a new Six Domain Leadership Model which draws correlations between
human leadership lessons learned in successful organizational management and
leadership from studying the honeybee as a super social species. David has a BS
in Electrical Engineering and a master’s in business administration with
concentrations in Finance and Operations Research. He was in the computer
business for over 30 years.

Tony Olekas is a Journeyman working toward his Masters and is an active Board member of Anderson County Beekeepers Association (ACBA). Most of the time he works as a beekeeper in his own apiary and oversees hives at Rocky River Nature Preserve (RRNP) part of Anderson University.  He enjoys helping new beekeepers and club members learn how to seasonally manage their colonies. He will be discussing the symbiotic relationship between bees and flowers, the nectar and pollen they forage and how nutrition impacts the honey bee and the colony in which it lives. 

Ben Powell is the Apiculture and Pollinator Program Coordinator at Clemson University. For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by the natural world and the interactions of its inhabitants, especially the smaller majority (insects and other invertebrates).
I believe that conservation and wise use of natural resources is essential to preserving ecosystem services, especially in developing communities, and the public has a vested interest in protecting pollinators and other invertebrates for the critical roles they play in maintaining agriculture and ecosystems.
As the Apiculture and Pollinator Program coordinator, my primary goal is to provide educational resources for South Carolina’s beekeepers and expand appreciation for all insects and invertebrates, especially those that pollinate South Carolina’s farms and forests.
I focus my education and outreach programs on two areas: 1) advancing apiculture and beekeeping and 2) improving public awareness about the importance of pollinators and invertebrate biodiversity. Clemson Apiculture and Pollinator Program extension activities include the Clemson Apiculture and Pollinator Program website and Facebook page, the bimonthly newsletter (CAPPingg), advanced trainings for beekeepers, pesticide applicators, and the general public, pollinator habitat demonstration plots, and teaching apiaries.

After 50 years of practice, Brian Roberts recently retired and is enjoying more time in the apiaries. During his career, he founded the Fountain Inn Animal Clinic which he owned and operated with his wife for 35 years. He also served as president of the Blue Ridge Veterinary Medical Association, Greater Greenville Veterinary Medical Association, and was on the board for the Greenville County Veterinary Emergency Clinic. He is a member of the American Veterinary Association, South Carolina
Association of Veterinarians, and the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium. He established a small apiary at his clinic and enjoyed talking to clients about bees and honey. He has also been an active member of his local Rotary Club where he has served as the President and Foundation Chair.

Brian started beekeeping over 30 years ago. During that time, he served as President of the Piedmont Beekeepers Association for 2 years and on the board of directors for several years. He assisted teaching beginning beekeeping classes with Steve Genta for over 15 years and has done several presentations for local beekeeping clubs. What he enjoys most is sitting around with a group of beekeepers and discussing what is going on in the bee yard, reading about bees and challenging himself to learn more and improve what he is doing in the apiary every year.

Dr. Nancy Simpson is a retired psychology instructor (Trident Technical College) and a
practicing clinical psychologist. She is also a certified SC Wesh Honey Judge and member of the American Honey Show Training Council (AHSTC). She started beekeeping in 2013 when she tagged along with a friend to attend a beekeeping class in Charleston. The science, art and magic of the hive has captivated her ever since.
Nancy has many passions; she spins & weaves as the staff craft interpreter at Middleton Place historic Charleston, tells stories to the tourists, tends her flock of dairy goats, and has managed to keep bees alive for over ten years. She and her husband reside on NannyBees Farm in Ravenel, SC where she truly lives in “The Land of Milk and Honey.”

JENNIFER YORK, née JEN SWEARINGTON grew up in rural Indiana on land that was once her great-grandfather’s farm. She has been drawing as long as she can remember. Mentored by her artist aunt Kelly Hoernig, Jen knew by the age of twelve that she wanted to become an artist. She studied fine art and art history, earning a BFA from Pratt Institute in 1997 and an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2000, then spent one year as an Artist-in-Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.
Jen settled in Asheville, NC and in 2003 juried into the Southern Highland Craft Guild and founded Jennythreads Studio. She and her assistants worked together to cut, sew, dye, print, and finish each Jennythreads item in-house, each to Jen’s original designs and handprinted with her unique illustrations and print patterns. Jennythreads Studio produced about 2000 finished pieces per year, selling retail and fine art and craft fairs, and wholesale to boutiques and galleries. Jennythreads has been featured in Asheville’s Mountain XPress, craft trade magazine Niche, Belle Armoire, and got a mention in the New York Times, among dozens more accolades. But Jen takes pride that countless stylish women continue to love, wear and collect her Jennythreads pieces.
In 2013, her comprehensive how-to book Printing on Fabric: Techniques with Screens, Stencils, Inks and Dyes was published by Lark Crafts.
In March 2020, Swearington relocated to the South Carolina coast and continues her creative journey among the tidal marshlands of James Island and Folly Beach, South Carolina. She was a 2021 Gibbes Museum Visiting Artist, with her solo exhibition “New Histories,” followed by two more solo exhibitions “Estuary Blues” at the Myrtle Beach Art Museum and “Constructed Realities” at the Museum of Art- DeLand (Florida), both in 2023. In November 2022, Jen married Sam York and now goes by Jennifer York.