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2025 Winter Conference
Meet Our Speakers!
Tom Repas
Tom Repas of Hermosa South Dakota has a long list of achievements on his mead resume including being the only two-time Best of Show winner at Mazer Cup, and winner of the AMMA National Mead Maker of the Year and AMMA Ken Schramm Award. Tom is a member of Ale Riders Homebrew Club, won a gold medal in Category #38: Specialty Mead with a Historical Mead during the 2021 National Homebrew Competition. Repas’ Historical Mead was chosen as first out of 48 entries in the category. All of this shows Tom is a very talented mead maker who consistently wins medals with his meads, and has a skill for thinking outside the box for flavor profiles. His mushroom mead was the talk of the mead community for some time when he brought it out to taste. I got to try it, I was stunned at how good it was. Of course, Tom uses his own honey, as well as honeys from other providers and areas, and they’re all good!
Tom now brews and offers his variety of mead creations at Zymurcracy Beer Company located on the edge of rapid city south Dakota. Tom still brews at home while gardening and spending time with his wife and 4 legged friends. Even after all of these accomplishments Tom still finds time to travel and teach both mead making and beekeeping across the country and eventually, once he stops declining the invites, the world.
Randy Oliver
Randy Oliver owns and operates a small commercial beekeeping enterprise in the foothills of Grass Valley in Northern California. He and his two sons manage about 1000 colonies for migratory pollination, and produce queens, nucs, and honey. He has over 40 years of practical beekeeping experience, plus holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biological Sciences. Randy researches, analyzes, and digests beekeeping information from all over the world in order to not only broaden his own depth of understanding and knowledge, but to develop practical solutions to many of today’s beekeeping problems, which he then shares with other beekeepers through his various articles in bee magazines, his speaking engagements worldwide, and on his website: www.ScientificBeekeeping.com
Natalee Summers
Natalee Summers is a 16 year old beekeeper from NW Missouri. Her journey began in 2017, when her family started their apiary and business, known as Hitch Hive Honey. As the business grew, so did Natalee's fascination with the intricate world of bees. She started a YouTube channel with the help of her parents, in 2020, called “Beekeeping with Natalee.” Natalee really enjoys grafting queens, which has led to thousands of grafts in the last few years. Undeterred by her age, Natalee has set ambitious milestones for herself, including almond pollination in CA and completing the Master Beekeeping program from the University of Florida. She is excited to see where her passion for bees takes her!
Brad Price
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Brad Price has been an active beekeeper for 13 years. He found that his beekeeping success improved greatly after semi-retiring from a 32-year IT career, partly because of more time to pay attention to the bees but also having more time to absorb bee information from YouTube channels, websites and books.
Brad has had 100% overwintering success for his 20 hives in four out of the last five years. He attributes that mostly to mite control but also to providing the bees with well insulated hives for the winter so that they can conserve the heat that they produce. Brad produces 15-25 nucs for sale each year by grafting queens from his own overwintered stock. The nuc sales help to keep his beekeeping hobby in the black and to reduce colony strength in the spring to help reduce swarming.
When not keeping bees, Brad owns and operates a wood-fired pizza food truck specializing in catering to back yard parties.