Our Mission
Mission Beelieve provides sustainable beekeeping education to Veterans and First Responders. We offer a Beekeeping Beginners Course, mentorship, hands-on workshops, and seminars to help them learn a new trade while connecting with nature and the local community. Our Veterans and First Responders refocus their negative energy into something more purposeful when they embrace the therapeutic and vocational aspects of beekeeping. Additionally, we provide local outreach to educate the public about pollinators and restoring lost habitats.
Most Veterans coming home are used to being needed by many, losing the sense of purpose
can be disheartening. While veterans are hanging up the hats, First Responders are putting theirs on everyday, facing their daily duties of protecting our communities.
Who else is better to protect our pollinators than the men and women who protect us every day?
What we offer
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Beginning beekeeper course
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Hands on workshops
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Mentor Support
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Community outreach
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Monthly Educational Meeting
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Continued Educational Classes
How does it help
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Provides a purpose
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Sense of Peace
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Connecting with like individuals
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Economic opportunities
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Protecting/restoring the environment
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Providing a way to reintegrate back into the community
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Helps direct negative energy into positive energy
Unique Learning Experiences
If you are a veteran or first responder interested in beekeeping, we would like you to join us for a unique learning opportunity. Additional to the beekeeping basics and continuing education, we promote ways to reverse pollinator declines and improve bee health through holistic beekeeping, conservation, habitat restoration, and educational
outreach.
We offer education and a communal support system in a quiet, relaxed environment.
Our beelief is that the therapeutic and vocational benefits of beekeeping for returning Veterans and active or retired First Responders is truly beneficial
COME JOIN OUR TEAM!!!
Our team
Monica Schmitt
Director
Monica, a seasoned beekeeper, educates the public on the importance of honeybees and native pollinators. Beekeeping wasn’t always easy but through it all she gained a passion and community like no other! Her bees lifted her up and guided her on a constructive path for her and everyone around her. After overcoming many life stressors, she saw the benefit it would have for others.
Gaining that dedication and passion derived from her honeybees, she won best in show for Extracted Honey at EAS 2019, President of CCBA, and one the creators of Mission Beelieve. Seizing every opportunity that she can, to get the word out about the benefits of beekeeping and how to support all pollinators; her love for education and outreach are infectious. In addition to community outreach events, you can find Monica giving one on one lessons with beekeepers and the interested public. In her personal time, she goes around helping beekeepers, with issues they may be having at their own apiaries. Colony health and education is her first priority!
Mission Beelieve provides Monica a way to share her expertise about the opportunity’s beekeeping brings and another way to give back to her community. Sharing her knowledge and passion with Veterans and First Responders, she hopes to touch as many of these heroes as possible, giving them a renewed sense of purpose and community.
Tristan Bannon
Director
Tristan Bannon is one of the founders of Mission Beelieve and a part of Carroll County Beekeepers Association. He assists with most of the outreach and has become a key figure at CCBA. He took three years to work on an organic farm, out in Southern Oregon. There he got to be immersed into a community that formed an organic co-op, where everything is produced in the surrounding area. With hopes of creating something similar back home. Returning home, his mother and him created a non profit called Mission Beelieve, to help educate veterans and first responders to become sustainable beekeepers. A year later they purchased an 18 acre farm to use to help educate their veteran and first responder community. He holds monthly hives dives for their partners at the Mission Beelieve training apiary and works with them in the cut flower fields. He also manages over 70 colonies, which creates the opportunity to take their partners into larger production colonies and experience the difference in managing older colonies.