Who We Are
Dr. Patrick Pynes
My name is Patrick Pynes. I have been an organic beekeeper for 34 years, since the spring of 1991. When I was 5 years old, I saw and fell in love with a bottle of my Uncle Rob Pynes’ cut comb honey. This was red clover honey from rural northeast Texas. Twenty-five years later, I caught my first swarm of honeybees on Albuquerque’s West Mesa, and became a beekeeper.
Since that time, I have kept honeybees in New Mexico, Washington state, and Arizona. About ten years after I began keeping bees, I felt experienced and confident enough to begin teaching beekeeping classes and workshops both inside and outside of academia.
Since 2001, I have taught beekeeping workshops for and with Northern Arizona University, Prescott College, and Coconino Community College. My public teaching includes public presentations and consulting for Honeybeeteacher LLC, which I created as a small business in 2012.
I have a doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. At present, I am a full time Assistant Teaching Professor for the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies at NAU in Flagstaff. I am also an Adjunct Faculty member for the Sustainable Communities Program at NAU.
I was born in Texas and grew up there and in Latin America, (Panama, Mexico, and Honduras). I am a proud descendant of people who were from Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Germany, Scandinavia, and the Southern Appalachian Mountains of the Cherokee Nation.
Sharon Lee Harris
Sharon is a documentary photographer. Through her photographs, she has recorded her journeys in Europe, Siberia, Japan, and throughout the Colorado Plateau in the West. Her work also involves documenting cross-cultural community and tribal events in Northern Arizona. The driving force behind her work is her passion for indigenous culture, archaeology, geology, and the natural world of the Colorado Plateau. She began photographing the fascinating world of honeybees and pollinators in 2012.
