DIRECTORS

Alexander Grelli, Co-Founder, IT
Meredith Meyer Grelli, Co-Founder, Special Projects and Partnerships
Christina Joy Neumann, Co-Founder, Special Lectures and Design
Stephen Repasky, Steward and Mentor Program
Robert Steffes, Co-Founder, Apiary Operations
Jennifer Wood, Co-Founder, Education
Joe Zgurzynski, Education

Alexander Grelli, Co-Founder
Beginning in 2006, Alex kept bees on block-long urban site in Chicago for the Chicago Honey Coop, a one hundred hive apiary in the city’s North Lawndale neighborhood. After moving with his wife Meredith to wonderful but yardless house in Pittsburgh, Alex and Meredith realized they needed to think creatively about how to make a home for bees in the city and figured other would-be urban beekeepers struggle with the same space constraints. So, they have made it their mission, to find a common space for urban folks to keep bees around Pittsburgh. When Alex is not tending to Burgh Bees’ hives around the city, he is an Associate at Reed Smith LLP. Alex graduated with a BA and JD from the University of Chicago.

Meredith Meyer Grelli, Co-Founder
Meredith’s mission from the start of Burgh Bees has been to find places in our fine city for residents to keep bees and in so doing promote a healthy environment and reactivate underutilized spaces. After being initiated by her beekeeper grandfather as a kid, Meredith found more formal training while working at the Chicago Honey Coop, an urban apiary that sits in the shadow of an abandoned factory in Chicago. Meredith has a BA in urban history from the University of Chicago, completed culinary training at Le Cordon Bleu Paris and is currently working on her MBA at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business.  Before Burgh Bees she worked in community development and land reclamation at the Western Pennsylvania Brownfields Center. Burgh Bees brings together her love of food and city spaces.

Christina Joy Neumann, Co-Founder, is an architect fascinated by the efficiency of the honey bee species to create successful communities as master natural builders. She is interested in interface between sustainable urban agriculture and urban design. Her great uncle Hugh was also "architect turned enamoured beekeeper" when homesteading at his farm in the North Hills of Pittsburgh. Christina took up the family work when she co-habitated with her "metro" bees for three years. Christina also overwintered with a small observation hive to gain greater insight on daily operations over the course of a year. She was the 2008 Beaver Valley Area Beekeeping Assocation newsletter editor and is currently working commercially with the Volcano Island Honey Company on the Big Island of Hawaii producing organic varietal honey and setting up a small-cell organic wax foundation production.

Stephen Repasky is a second generation beekeeper who grew up on a small farm inArmstrong County and helped his father with his hives. Twenty years later, he reignited that interest and has 10 hives of his own back on his parents’ farm, but lives in the city of Pittsburgh!  He joined BurghBees with the intent of looking for a place to put some city hives but instead got wrapped up in the energy, the mission and dreams of BurghBees and is active assisting with everything from mentoring new beekeepers, honey extraction and even extraction of feral colonies from structures.  Stephen has a B.Sc. degree in Wildlife Management from Penn State and is a wildlife biologist when he’s not playing with his bees.

Robert Steffes & Jennifer Wood, Co-Founders
In 2003, Jennie read The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and was intrigued by the novel’s beekeeping descriptions enough to keep reading. She next picked up Sue Hubbell’s A Book of Bees and was hooked! When she saw a notice for the Beaver Valley Area Beekeepers’ Association beginning beekeeping class in 2004, she talked Robert into going with her.  That May, Robert & Jennie purchased two colonies from a beekeeper in Portersville, who also served as their mentor. SteffesWood Apiary, on the grounds of their home in Aliquippa, now boasts more than 20 colonies.  For most of his professional life, Robert has been a corporate pilot.  He also grows great garlic and brews fantastic beer.  Jennifer is an Associate Professor of Communication at Penn State New Kensington and a volunteer mediator for the Pennsylvania Office of Victim Services Victim/Offender Mediation program.

Joe Zgurzynski is second generation beekeeper who grew up on a small farm in New Jersey. He was president of the local 4-H beekeeping club as a teenager and has had a lifelong interest in beekeeping and entomology. The beehives are managed as part of Country Barn Farm which is located a few miles north of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania city limits. Joseph is a member of the Beaver Valley Area Beekeepers Association as well as the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association. He has taken college level courses in entomology and beekeeping and takes an active role in mentoring new beekeepers.