Upcoming classes/events:

Sunday, February 21, 2010: 1pm-3:30pm

Learn how to make healing herbal skin salve! Use common plants, oils and beeswax to create an ointment that will promote wound healing, and help your skin heal itself from fungal infections and rashes. Learn how Camilla Barry taught women in Afghanistan to make this salve and start their own successful businesses.
  Fee : $50.00

Camilla Barry has taught science and nature studies for over twenty years. She founded a nonprofit agency, Classrooms Across Cultures, to lead teacher-training in Afghanistan. This past summer she completed her 8th trip to Afghanistan, where she helped develop the national science curriculum. Her lessons about bees and botany led to founding several women's businesses, selling the same skin salve that will be taught in class.

Sunday, March 14, 2010: 10am-4pm

We will gather in the early spring and prepare our journey with the bees through the “bee-season”. We will study the life forces and rhythms of the bees and the different ways we can support and nurture them. BD standards and the Melissa Garden approach will be part of the curriculum. We will see, how “bee-tending” can become an art, and a practice of respectfully engaging in the web of life. The day will include practical aspects of bee-tending e.x. natural comb, swarming, hive designs, initial set up of hives and more. Weather permitting, we will be in the apiary with the bees. Beginners are welcome (this is the first day of day-light-savings).

Bring a bag lunch
  Fee : $30-60 sliding scale

$30 $35 $40 $45 $50 $55 $60

Sunday, April 18, 2010: 10am-4pm

This day is dedicated to what Rudolf Steiner calls the "love life" of the bee-colony: "That which we experience within ourselves only at a time when our hearts develop love is actually the very same thing that is present as a substance in the entire beehive." We will combine the study of their life forces and rhythms with the exploration of our deepest heart connection with the emanation of the bees. We will explore the nature of bees and our relationship with them through stillness, observation, meditation, inner journey and exposure. We will approach bees not only as beekeepers, but rather as sentient beings, with an open mind and heart, and a strong focus on listening on all levels. We will take a look at different ways of relating, and examine new levels of communication with them. The day will be centered on the premises that bees can be a medium to touch our own heart , and to touch life as a miracle. Please feel free to bring a journal, something to draw, or anything else, you would like to bring. Having bees is not a prerequisite at all.

Bring a bag lunch
  Fee : $30-60 sliding scale

$30 $35 $40 $45 $50 $55 $60

Tours of The Melissa Garden, by Garden Designer Kate Frey

Come experience the buzz and blossoms at our honeybee sanctuary with garden designer Kate Frey. We will have regular tours throughout the year on the first Friday of most months. Learn why we decided to create this special garden as a honeybee habitat, and about some of the honeybee and pollinator plants in our lush garden. One of our beekeepers will be on the tour to give a brief introduction to some of our “alternative hives.” Wear comfortable shoes.

Kate Frey is an internationally distinguished garden designer who has been awarded two gold medals at London’s Chelsea Flower Show. She worked for 18 years at Fetzer’s organic garden in Hopland, CA which was used as a test plot for pollinators by Dr. Gordon Frankie at U. C. Berkeley. She now specializes in creating beautiful habitat and pollinator gardens.

Fee: $25. Please register in advance by sending an email to queenbee@themelissagarden.com, or by phone: (707) 433-2114. Be sure to include both your email address and phone number when you make your reservation. We will email you a map and the address to mail your check to.

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Choose a date

March 19, 2010 April 16, 2010 May 21, 2010 June 18,2010 July 16, 2010 August 20, 2010 September 17, 2010

Previous Classes

List of previous classes

Work Exchange

The Melissa Garden offers a work exchange program. In exchange for two hours of work, 50% or the registration fee will be waived for any class. Work entails helping to set up for the class – such as helping to prepare tea and snacks; create bouquets for the tables; register participants; or clean-up after the class. Please inquire about work exchange by sending an email to queenbee@themelissagarden.com or by phone, (707) 433-2114.