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.
