How to Be a Natural Beekeeper

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[00:00:59] Introducing Leo Sharashkin

Leo Sharashkin: [00:01:00] Thanks for having me on your podcast, and I’m always excited to share the information about natural beekeeping with the audiences at Mother Earth News, because I know that many of your listeners and your readers run with this information and become very successful beekeepers themselves.

My name is Dr. Leo Sharashkin, and I’m a full-time natural beekeeper in the south of Missouri, in the Ozark Mountains. And I got a PhD in forestry from the University of Missouri in Columbia. Originally, I was doing forestry work, but gradually gravitated towards our beekeeping. And now I support the family with five children doing natural beekeeping for a living.

We have a long-term relationship with Mother Earth News. I was presenting at many of the Mother Earth News Fairs over the years. And also there were a number of articles on natural beekeeping and [00:02:00] horizontal hives that appeared in Mother Earth News. I also have a website called HorizontalHive.com, which is a powerhouse of information on natural beekeeping and has lots of free advice and free plans for building your own low-maintenance, easy-to-care-for horizontal hives.

Jessica Mitchell: And I know you have some resources on there with some books that you’ve helped put together as well, correct?

Leo Sharashkin: Yes. Thank you. There are a number of books that I was involved with. The most important one is called “Keeping Bees with a Smile”. The second edition that appears in 2020 was endorsed by Mother Earth News, so I’m thankful for your promotion of this message.

It’s just the kind of book that makes sense because instead of just telling you what to do and not to do with the bees, it also explains how it ties into how bees live in the wild. So you can just provide them with the good life experience that they would have [00:03:00] in nature. And have plentiful honey in the process as well.

The other books that I edited and published are in English are the very important book called “Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives.” It introduces the alt techniques for managing this particular hive that we’ll discuss a little bit later.

Finally, there is this book called “Raising Honeybee Queens”. Today, many beekeepers experience high mortality with their bee colonies, unfortunately. So to be successful, you can no longer be relying on purchasing commercial bees. Instead, there you need to start multiplying your own survivor stock. And this book, “Raising Honeybee Queens” shows you the very simple methods of how you can become self-sufficient in your beekeeping operation so you never have to buy bees again.

Jessica Mitchell: To start, I thought we could take a little bit of time for you to maybe share a bit of how you transitioned [00:04:00] to full-time beekeeping. So what, what really prompted that shift in you?

Leo Sharashkin: I think it’s an exciting story because after completing my degree in forestry from the University of Missouri Columbia, I was doing forestry consultancy work in southern Missouri in the Ozarks and throughout the country.

And what I saw, especially here in the Ozarks, was that wilderness beekeeping was the most economically feasible and beneficial use of the wilderness resources here in the south of the state. For example, if I were to put a number of beehives in the wilderness with all of these plants that local farmers treat as nuisance, like sumacs, I was seeing the economic return on doing wilderness beekeeping was higher than cattle ranging, or even logging without destroying the resource.

Jessica Mitchell: Wow.

Leo Sharashkin: So a landlord owner who goes and removes all of the trees and puts cattle [00:05:00] on will never make as much money, ironically, as doing a non-destructive natural beekeeping. So this was the point when I saw that moving forward I wanted to incorporate more and more of it on my own farm, which is 80 acres of beautiful Ozark ground.

Also the methods I was using turned out to be so successful that more and more people were gravitating towards them than these books, “Keeping Bees with a Smile” and others that I was involved with appeared. And my website, HorizontalHive.com was generating more and more interest among people who wanted to have the kind of beekeeping experience that we can call keeping bees with a smile that gradually with more and more hives are thriving.

It became a full-time occupation for me. Not just producing honey, but also teaching others how they can be very successful doing organic beekeeping.

Jessica Mitchell: That’s really [00:06:00] exciting how many people were so attracted to that type of practice that it really just exploded.

Leo Sharashkin: Oh, that’s true. You know, because natural beekeeping is just that. You look how bees live in nature without our involvement, and then you ask this very simple but fundamental question, “How can we recreate the same kind of life experience for them inside your managed colonies?”

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: And if today we see evidence that bees in the wild are doing just fine and bees in commercially managed hives are struggling, we can learn from the success of the wild bees and be very successful beekeepers ourselves, if only we go with Mother Nature instead of going against her.

[00:06:46] Natural Beekeeping vs. Commercial Beekeeping

Jessica Mitchell: Now let’s go a little bit more into specifics with some of those natural beekeeping practices. Can you share maybe some specific ways that the way that you do natural beekeeping differs from perhaps the more commercialized or maybe even [00:07:00] mainstream, if we wanna call it that way of beekeeping that a lot of people might be a little more familiar with.

Leo Sharashkin: You know, the most important thing something that’s so obvious that most people overlook at is the quality of the bees that you put into your beehives. Winnie the Pooh was saying, “there is the right sort of bees and then there is the wrong sort of bees.” So unfortunately, the kind of bees that most people buy in the marketplace and then they put them into their beehives and then enjoy some honey this summer; but then these bees die over the winter. So this kind of semi- domesticated bees available commercially, they’re like domesticated livestock by this point. They have very low disease resistance. They are not acclimated to your conditions. So for example, if you live in a cold climate, Michigan, Wisconsin, most beekeepers are using the bees that are bred in the south, [00:08:00] and then you get their southern genetics and low disease adaptation.

You put it in the north, or anywhere else for that matter, and you have an animal that’s completely dependent on you for their survival.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: That’s why for many smaller scale beekeepers, the experience is no longer satisfying because you need to feed them sugar water, you need to baby them and to medicate them. In the process of doing so, you pollute your own honey with chemicals and antibiotics, then you need to protect them for the winter. And with all of this care, many of them will still not be surviving until the following spring. So need to buy more bees. So this is the commercial side of it, buying these and then struggling, keeping alive this domesticated form of the honeybee.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: Fortunately, there is another alternative, and this is working with the locally available wild honeybees. [00:09:00] No matter where you live in the country, in the woods, or even in the suburbs, there are plentiful honeybee colonies that live on their own in tree hollows, but also inside human structures, inside the walls of the buildings, between the ceiling joists, and these wild or feral colonies are obviously not cared for. They’re not receiving any medications, nobody’s feeding them sugar water. So if you are able to get this kind of locally adapted and disease resistant stock, then if they can do just fine without our help, then they will do very well as a maintenance-free colony when you transfer them into your beehives.

Jessica Mitchell: Right.

Leo Sharashkin: So I would say that of all of the differences between the conventional approach to beekeeping and the natural approach, the first and the most important thing is working with local [00:10:00] and locally adapted stock of these rather than the commercial available stock.

Jessica Mitchell: What are some of the challenges that might come with beekeeping this way?

Leo Sharashkin: Well see, the first challenge is the availability.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: It’s all too easy to go online and to order a package of bees. They’re quite expensive. Click and then they appear at your doorstep in a small package that you just need to dump inside your beehive. So I think the convenience is what seduces many people of just ordering the bees and receiving them.

But again, as I mentioned, this kind of stock will not be as robust as the wild strains that live without human intervention. So the greatest challenge of catching your own bees is first you need to find them. Because even if you buy bees from a local beekeeper, it doesn’t really mean that these are local bees because the genetic stock that this [00:11:00] local beekeeper is working with may be coming from elsewhere.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: If two years ago they started by ordering bees and queens from the south, they are just breeding them locally, but the genetics are still non-local. You won’t be successful with that. So I would say availability of local bees are is a challenge, not because they’re not out there.

But you cannot just order them and receive them in the mail. You need to go ahead and source these local bees yourself by setting out some small beehives in the spring on trees. And just as birds move into bird houses that we set up for them, the swarms of these local honeybees will be occupying these ‘swarm traps’ or ‘beta hives’ as they’re called and this is the way to start with the local bees.

Another challenge is this, and this explains just why the prevailing beekeeping community was not really interested in localized stock. When you work [00:12:00] with commercial bees, they’re all pretty much the same. They’re very uniform. And this makes it convenient for medium or large scale operations.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: You have a hundred hives and they’re similar. Whatever you do, they respond similarly, it’s almost like growing a plantation of trees that have the same genetics or teaching in a public school where you just teach the standard program and not really taking the differences of different pupils into account.

Now with the wild stock, there is a huge amount of variation. That’s great because nature is thriving on biodiversity. But it may be a bit challenging, especially for medium or large scale beekeepers, because each hive will have individuality. Some will be expanding quicker in the spring and sometimes smaller. Some will be more defensive and others will be very gentle. Some [00:13:00] will be producing a lot of baby bees and others will be more conservative, et cetera, et cetera.

So all of the traits that you want to have uniform in a large commercial operation are just no longer there. But this is not a challenge for a small hobby beekeeper or anyone who would like to add some beehives to their backyard or their farm because something that’s not practical for a beekeeper with 10,000 beehives who cannot tolerate all of this high degree of biodiversity is actually exciting and desirable for a smaller scale beekeeper.

[00:13:36] A Swarm for Your Natural Beehive

Jessica Mitchell: And when we say local bees, how local is local? So if someone were to, you know, look for a swarm, how far out would you recommend that search be?

Leo Sharashkin: Well, basically the honeybees we’re talking about are not really local-local, because they were brought from Europe 500 years ago by the European settlers.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: There was a species of honey [00:14:00] producing bee here in North America a long time ago, but it went extinct probably during one of the glaciations. So these are European honeybees, but they’ve been here for five centuries. So they became thoroughly naturalized. And they developed a lot of variation in the genetics between the different populations. So these European honeybees that live far in the north or in the mountains are quite different than the wild honeybees living in the south. So the closer you can be to where you live the better.

It depends, not so much on the distance, but on the change in the ecosystems.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: If you live in the mountains with big differences in elevation, then moving even 20 miles can create a completely different ecosystem because you’re changing elevations. If you’re on the plains, then sometimes moving a hundred miles doesn’t make much difference because [00:15:00] you’re still in the same what’s called bio region, biological region.

So if you’re interested to see what would be local for you, you can look up the map of biological regions online. And anything that’s within the same biological region would work well. But beware that you may be catching a swarm locally a few miles from where you live, but the genetics may not be local at all because there is another beekeeper close by who brought packages from a completely different part of the country, and the drones, the male bees, they copulate with the female queen bees in open flight. So unfortunately, if you have beekeepers who use conventional bee stock or within three miles of you, Then your queens will be meeting with probably non-local drones, even if you catch your swarms and you propagate your colonies [00:16:00] locally diluting the adaptation and diluting the local genetics.

So you either need to be very isolated or put your bait hives at least three miles from a local beekeeper that you know who uses non-local bees, or you need to convert them into your own faith.

[00:16:18] Benefits of Natural Beekeeping

Jessica Mitchell: Now looking at your own hives, now that you’ve been doing natural beekeeping for a while what are some of the benefits that you find personally for you and your family in terms of what, what those bees bring to your property or to your honey yields?

Leo Sharashkin: When you start working with the locally adapted stock, then the survival rate will usually be much, much higher than with the commercial strains.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: I know it’s from my personal experience, when we got this property in 2008 and I started setting out these boxes to attract the local honeybee swarms, beekeepers in this region, who knew what I was up to, thought that I would [00:17:00] truly fail.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm.

Leo Sharashkin: And when I talk to them and say, well, how do you know natural beekeeping cannot be successful? They answer was that they were treating their colonies repeatedly with chemicals to kill pathogens within them several times a year. And even with these chemical treatments a large proportion of the colonies still failed every winter.

So the logic was, if you get bees and you do not help them by chemical treating them, then they will have no protection from all of these parasites and parasites basically will explode, multiply, infest the colony and kill them. But this was not my experience because the genetics of my bees is very different from theirs.

And what I was saying, that without any treatments, without sugar feeding and basically without most of the conventional procedures that they recommend for honeybee colonies, the survival rate [00:18:00] has consistently been much greater than our neighbor beekeepers that keep buying stock every spring.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: So this of course has many other ramifications.

When your bees are not dying, it becomes economically more rewarding. Somebody said a joke at one of the conferences that I attended, you need to buy your children a beehive. This way, they won’t have any money to do drugs.

Jessica Mitchell: [Jessica laughs]

Leo Sharashkin: Because conventional beekeeping can be very expensive. Just consider the cost of the bees alone.

Jessica Mitchell: Yeah.

Leo Sharashkin: If you want to have, say, even three beehives, and you need to buy a new package of bees every spring because your package you bought a year ago didn’t last at all, it’s $600 every spring just to repopulate your hives. But then the heartbreak that comes with seeing a colony of bees dead, all of the bees at the bottom of the [00:19:00] hive, that this is something that turns people away from beekeeping after they experience the first few failures.

So I would say working with local disease resistant stock becomes more profitable, more pleasurable, and more sustainable because not only you never have to buy bees again. But also you can multiply your colonies to the point where you start having too many bees, at which point you can sell the colonies that are the surplus you don’t want.

And in addition to the economic return, you are also helping other local beekeepers obtain the most sustainable genetics and saturate the local area with the survival traits of your hives.

Jessica Mitchell: That’s a really great point and it, it goes back to what you were saying, how you can support your family that way by being a full-time beekeeper.

Leo Sharashkin: Let me give you a real life example. Three years ago, beginner beekeeper from Kansas [00:20:00] attended my class. I teach full two-day workshops at myapiary, here in southern Missouri, and it attracts people from all over the country, even sometimes internationally. So he attended this class two years ago and he went back and he started setting out these baited hive in the spring to attract local swarms, and he went from 10 colonies that he originally had to 200 colonies in two summers. So now after just two years, he has a thriving operation with over 200 colonies. They’re very good honey producers. He went as far as purchasing a building in town and opened his own honey shop. After two years with minimal expense, because again, he didn’t have to buy these 200 colonies.

If you were to buy 200 colonies on the market, that’s $40,000 just in the expense of the bees alone. And you will likely need to [00:21:00] spend another $40,000 the following spring to replace the colonies that are lost. So see, it became a robust, sustainable operation from the get-go with minimal upfront cost. And I have more stories like that to share.

It’s not just me. I don’t have some special, you know, green thumb or I’m not a bee whisperer. The reason for the success of natural beekeeping, if you do it right, is that it is solidly grounded in the biology of the honeybee. So beekeepers may have different opinions on different subjects, but here we’re talking about the opinion of the honeybee, and what would make them a thriving colony in the wild is the same thing that would make them a thriving colony in your hives.

That means working with the locally adapted stock that is resistant, minimizing the disturbance on your colony, we’ll talk about it a little bit later, but basically the conventional approach involves [00:22:00] opening the hive all the time, like every seven days.

That creates a necessary disturbance for the bees’ exposure to pesticides. Of course, you cannot avoid bees flying to the sprayed fields if you live near a conventional agricultural field.

Mm-hmm.

But people do not realize, the greatest amount of chemical pollution of the beehive and of honey happens through beekeepers applying chemicals inside their beehives.

Jessica Mitchell: Hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: So if you use treatment-free approach and you do not pour chemicals onto your bees, then your honey will be much cleaner and will also command a higher price. And then, you know, again, everything boils down to doing something that you enjoy doing. I would have trouble enjoying this conventional style of beekeeping because it’s stressful on the bees, and it’s stressful on the beekeeper. And handling all of these 55 pound boxes is not [00:23:00] helpful for your joints or your spine. Using local bees, using simple methods, and also using horizontal hives that don’t require heavy lifting, makes it pleasurable. And also something that the whole family can be involved with.

It’s an extremely satisfying small family business, whether you do it to sustain your family or whether you do it as a hobby.

[00:23:22] How to Source Your Bees

Jessica Mitchell: Absolutely.

Well, let’s get into some of that with beekeeping techniques. And one of the first things I wanted to talk about was going a little bit more in depth with how to source those local bees. So I thought we could take some time talking about maybe some of the supplies, the strategies of trapping those local swarms.

Leo Sharashkin: Thank you Jessica, for the question. Again, like with everything else, sir, in natural beekeeping, you rely on the natural processes that take place completely on their own without your involvement.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: So in the spring, the honeybee colonies start [00:24:00] procreating and the way they procreate is this. Inside a honeybee colony, there is one female bee that we call the queen. She’s the one that lays all the eggs that become workers, the female worker bees, and drones, the male bees that impregnate other queens.

So when they’re ready to split and create two colonies outta one, they raise a very large population of workers. And then they raise themselves a new queen. And before the new queen emerges from herself, the colony splits. Half of the worker bees fly off with the old queen, and they’re hanging somewhere on a branch with scouts going in all directions, looking for a new cavity to move in.

This is called swarming. When this swarm is hanging on the branch, they have a very limited amount of time to find a new cavity because they’re completely vulnerable and unprotected. [00:25:00] If they’re drenched by the storm, they can be killed. If they run out of food, they can starve to death because all the food they have is what they took from their mother colony in their stomachs prior to swarming.

They’re scrambling to find a suitable cavity, and these scouts from that swarm will survey maybe the half mile or a mile all around the swarm looking for potential cavity. If they’re in the woods, they would find a hollow tree and they would move into the tree. But because the big trees with large hollows inside are no longer as plentiful as they used to be in the virgin forests, if you give them an artificial cavity, then they will be attracted to that because it fills their bill for a new home.

So the small beehives, you can look them up at HorizontalHive.com, and there are also free plans for building them, this is a small hive that you hang on the [00:26:00] tree. The scouts discover this box, the whole swarm will move in. And the box itself is very simple. It’s about 10 gallons in volume, the volume that the bees prefer.

When the scouts go into a cavity, they found they don’t want it to be too huge because this would be difficult to heat during the winter or protect, but they cannot also accept the very small cavity that will be so small that they cannot store enough honey for the winter in this hollow.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: So researchers determined by setting out boxes of different sizes, that 10 gallons is about the volume that the beast prefer. So all of the free plans on HorizontalHive.com and also the swarm traps that we sell ready made, if you’d rather just go ahead and get one that’s ready to go. This box is positioned 10 feet off the ground because bees are looking for an elevated nest as protection from predators.

And finally, the only other thing that will help you [00:27:00] succeed is putting a special lure that has the smell attractive to the swarm. It’s simple lemongrass essential oil, but it comes in special slow-release tubes that keep this smell inside the box for a very long time through slow release.

Jessica Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Leo Sharashkin: Because swarms start flying in the early spring and they’ll keep flying until almost the first frost here in Missouri. It’s from late April until early September. So the special slow release tubes capture that smell of lemongrass that’s attractive to the swarm and release it slowly.

There is the free swarm catching guide on HorizontalHive.com, so you can look up additional points there, like what kind of tree is better to hang your swarm trap in and all the fine details.

It would probably take us a couple of hours to go over everything, but the most important three things are: right volume of the box, it being elevated 10 feet of the [00:28:00] ground, and finally having the kind of smell that will attract the swarm.

So early in the spring I would say couple of three weeks after the flowers started blooming, you set up a box like that in the tree, and then you check it periodically to see whether you, you have any bee activity at the entrance. And when you see that bees are active flying in and out, then it means the swarm moved in and you have some free bees right there on that tree in the swarm trap.

You sourced a local swarm and see, even if it’s not coming from the wilderness, but from somebody’s else’s beehives, it’s still better than buying a package of bees. Not only because of the lack of expense and acquiring them, but also if you caught a swarm from a beekeeper’s beehive, at least it means that the colony overwintered locally and was healthy and strong enough to produce a swarm. So it’s already [00:29:00] some step towards it becoming more locally adapted and acclimated. So it’s a better prospect than just buying commercial bees or that have zero local adaptation.

In addition to the important points I enumerated, the kind of the tree that’s on the edge of vegetation, on the edge of the woods along power lines or highways in hedgerows, in parks, somewhere where the tree stands out usually works better than the tree in the middle of the woods because these trees are, that are either very prominent or on the edge of vegetation, make it easier for the scouts to locate.

There is much more detail on the process with full colored pictures on the website and also in “Keeping Bees with a Smile” book.

Jessica Mitchell: A couple follow up questions I have to that, so let’s say someone wants to do this, but around their immediate house, they might not necessarily have any big trees or anything.

Have, do you have any instances where someone [00:30:00] who was learning from you or someone just needed to, to figure out how, how to source those local bees? Did they ever go to maybe some sort of public land after getting permission to try and capture a swarm that way?

Leo Sharashkin: Very good question. So you need to consider two things.

One thing is the probable source of the swarm. So where is that mother colony that will be issuing a swarm? And this is very easy to tell. If you see some flowers and you see honeybee on the flowers, that means there is a colony of honeybees within the flight range of the foraging bees.

Mm-hmm.

So this would also be within the flight range of the swarm when they emerge.

So it’s a very good sign. If you see flowers that are normally attractive to honeybees, for example early in the spring, it could be dandelions and some of the like crocuses and other ornamental plants. Anyway, if they are attractive to honeybees [00:31:00] and you see honeybees on them, then you have a source colony within their flying range, and you can confidently hang that swarm trap in that spot.

Another consideration is where these bees would normally be looking for a place to live.

Mm-hmm.

For example, if there is a big tree, but it’s in the middle of a huge fescue field and fescue doesn’t produce any pollen or nectar for the bees, it’s very unlikely that scouts would be looking in the middle of what is a big desert in their eyes.

Mm-hmm.

They would want to be positioned there somewhere where there is the tree, but where there are also sources of food nearby. For example, you wouldn’t be really interested in renting an apartment that’s one hour, 50 minute drive to the nearest grocery store. The same for the bees. They need to have groceries close by.

So just look at the even Google Maps and try visualizing, okay, where can [00:32:00] the bees be going when they’re looking for a swarm?

And actually, most of the time, even in suburban, you can be successful catching a swarm if you don’t have big trees to hang your swarm trap at. It does not have to be a tree specifically. It can be on the second level deck of your house. It can be on the roof of your garage. It can be even on on a deer stand, on the roof of your RV parked in your driveway. Anywhere where it’s certain 10 feet off the ground or so will work. And in the spring actually, you will see some bees that come to your house and they fly around the walls and it looks like they’re looking for something on the walls of your hive, of your house.

So these are the scout bees. They’re looking for cavities because they are either swarming already or before even the swarm emerged, they’re checking out the surroundings to see whether they can find a place for their new colony [00:33:00] to live.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, there are a few places actually where you would not be able to catch a swarm Again, look at whether you see bees on the flowers, and if you do, can set a box someplace close to the flowers and the wait for the swarm to come.

Jessica Mitchell: Do you have any sort of measured success rate for catching swarms? I’m guessing probably there sometimes they’re it, it’s a little more difficult to catch one, or maybe you just don’t get the swarm you want one year.

Leo Sharashkin: Absolutely. My long-term success rate is about 50%, which is huge. Yeah. Meaning for every two boxes on average that I set out on trays, I would catch a swarm.

But thank you for asking about variability, because that’s another reason why not everyone is catching swarms. There is tremendous variability from year to year because for the swarms, as we discussed already, for them to emerge, they need to build [00:34:00] up the population of the mother colony to the point when they can afford splitting in half and still having two viable entities for ’em.

So for example, if you have a very cold, rainy spring, And the bees cannot visit to flowers, they do not have the food to feed to the young generation, and they build up much slower. And there were years when the spring conditions were so unfavorable for the buildup of honeybees strength inside the colonies that out of 20 swarm traps, I only caught one swarm. So it would mean just 5%. And there were other years when the conditions were so, so favorable that I caught maybe 75% of the boxes were occupied.

So there are two considerations. First, where you live and how much natural habitat competition you have. For example, my average 50% success rate is actually on the lowest side of the [00:35:00] spectrum because I live in the Ozark wilderness where there are plentiful oak forests around, and when the bees discover my swarm catcher box, they may also discover a few hollow oak trees nearby. And the swarm may give preference to the natural cav moved there. But in places where there are fewer big trees than here in the woods, say in Kansas, I gave you this example of the beekeeper from Wichita area who just by catching swarms, went from 10 hives to 200 hives in two summers.

He was catching more swarms than he had boxes out. He could barely pull down a box from the tree and replenish it with an empty box and another swarm would come. It was overwhelming at times, and it’s explained easily. In Kansas, the flying swarms do not have as many real estate choices. If they find your box, that’s probably the only option they have [00:36:00] because there are a few trees around and all of the swarms would be yours in suburbia too.

The very reason why these often move inside their human structures like behind siding and establish their home in the ceiling or in the wall of a building later requiring removal. The very reason for that is they were not able to find any natural cavities. Your success rate will be dictated by how much choice the bees have, how plentiful fold the local swarms are.

For example, if you live in high desert, in the mountains, or in Arizona, away from sources of water, chances are you won’t catch any swarms at all just because there are no honeybees around because of your environmental conditions. But as long you, as you have a source of swarms and there as long as there is not ideal habitat for them already, which wouldn’t be in most [00:37:00] places, you know, 50% average success rate a long term is something you could be counting on in most areas.

You will not know what yours is until you try, but because the cost of these bait hives are so low compared to buying these, and these bait boxes will pay for themselves with the first swarm that you catch, I always encourage people to visualize how many colonies they would like to have. Multiplied by two, and this is the number of this bait hive that you set out.

You need to spread them at least one mile apart. It’s almost like throwing a net. You don’t want to put them all in your backyard because then you don’t get any coverage of the territory. And of course you would need to set it not only on your land, but at friends’ places or even at on public land with permission.

Mm-hmm.

My advice is this. I had no problem setting it on public land. As [00:38:00] long as you talk to the land manager and don’t just tell them that you are wanting to catch some free honeybees for your own beekeeping enjoyment. You need to show them that you will be providing some good public benefit in the process.

So if you call them and you explain that you are wanting to encourage and enhance the local genetics and local population of the honeybees, and this is the reason why wanting to attract swarms to your baited hives, the response will probably be much more positive than just, oh, can I set my swarm trap in the national park to get some free bees for my operation?

So if you present it as something that is of public interest, you’ll catch local swarms and you’ll be breeding them to first saturate the environment with the robust sustainable genetics and also benefit the local beekeeping community. And also tell the manager that according to [00:39:00] the scientific research in natural conditions, 75% of the swarms do not live long enough to be one year old because as any small animal in the wilderness, they’re very vulnerable.

And there are few small animals survive to adulthood. The same with the honeybees. It’s not like they have inferior genetics, but they’re completely on their own. So if weather the conditions are not favorable for foraging, if there is a strong storm when they’re still hanging on the branch unprotected, so they’re so vulnerable and exposed that many of them perish through no fault of their own.

So in a sense, by catching them in your swarm catcher, you actually increase their chances of survival. So it is both beneficial for you and it is highly beneficial for the local honeybee population.

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[00:40:30] What Hive to Get Your Bees

Jessica Mitchell: Our next thing I thought we could talk about then was once you have a swarm or multiple swarms how you go about choosing the right hive for those bees. I know that you specialize very much so in horizontal hives. But I thought first off, we could talk about some considerations people should keep in mind when deciding what kind of hive they should get for their bees.

Leo Sharashkin: That’s a very important question. It’s especially important because many people do not realize that they have a lot of [00:41:00] choices in this regard. If you go to beginner beekeepers class or if you buy a conventional beekeeping manual, all you will see is this vertically stacked series of boxes called the Langstroth Hive.

Mm-hmm.

And this is a vertical hive where there are sections and they start these in one box, and when they expand, eventually you put up another box and another box. So you start building them up almost like a chimney. And because there is, historically, this is the kind of the hive that started to be mass produced in this country first, people are not aware of other alternatives, but there are many other alternatives. If you are curious about the diversity and the richness of beekeeping methods around the world, I very highly recommend the book called “Honey from the Earth.” you can see it on HorizontalHive.com as a free preview. I first came across this book [00:42:00] in the French language and it was so spectacular, I translated it in English and we published it in the English language. So the photographer who produced this coffee table size book went to 40 different countries around the world taking pictures and writing stories about how bees are kept.

Mm-hmm.

And you’ll see that it’s not just about the stack of vertical boxes. Some countries specialize in horizontal hives. In some parts of the world, people still keep bees in small containers made out of twigs and leaves or covered with some mud there. So it’s a cylinder and there is a plug on one end and there is the entrance on the other end. You hang it in the tree.

Bees move in like in a swarm trap and you just open this plug in the back of the container to get some honey. In the end.

Some people still use what’s called log hides or gum, g-u-m, basically a hollow log where the swarm lives inside the log and you [00:43:00] open the top of it to remove it. Honey, once a year.

Finally, there is the very long tradition of honey hunting. This is when you discover a colony of wild bees living either in the woods or on cliffs in tropical climates. And you go and you harvest some honey from these wild colonies.

So the options are actually limitless, but of the more practical ones, they don’t require climbing 200 foot tall cliffs somewhere in the Nepal. So you can have a choice between the vertical hive and horizontal hive. And again, there is nothing wrong with either model, but they both have advantages and limitations. So what makes the vertical hive so attractive to commercial beekeepers may actually be a liability for a smaller beekeeper.

Here’s the difference.

Mm-hmm.

In a vertical hive, usually it’s a box with 10 frames, [00:44:00] and each frame has some honeycomb built by the bees. So when the bees outgrow this box, to give them extra space, you add another box on top and then another box on top, et cetera. So eventually, when the bees fill, one of these top boxes (called supers) with honey. You remove this box and you remove the frames and you spin honey out of this honeycomb, and then you’re able to give these frames and these boxes back to the bees to refill.

In the horizontal hive, you also have the frames, you also have the box. But instead of being expanded vertically, the horizontal hive is a longish box where all of the frames are on the same level. So you add frames on the same level without having to stack boxes up vertically.

Mm-hmm.

So one of the big first differences that see is the amount of heavy lifting involved in managing a conventional [00:45:00] beehive versus a horizontal hive. A box full of honey in the vertical hive can easily be 50 pounds. Just visualize whether you are physically comfortable or even willing to be handling 50 pound boxes on a regular basis. You know, I have some beekeepers who treat it as a fitness exercise. They say, yeah, I like handling it because it’s like going to the gym.

Jessica Mitchell: That’s one way to look at it!

Leo Sharashkin: You take boxes on and off, and they’re heavy.

But I have heard other beekeepers who told me that they had to sustain a hernia or hemorrhoid operation because they strain themselves with handling these very heavy boxes.

The bigger boxes that are called the brute chamber boxes in the vertical hive, if it becomes full of honey, it can be 70 pounds.

Jessica Mitchell: Wow.

Leo Sharashkin: So it’s not really even safe to be handling them on your own. So if you use a vertical hive, be prepared to have [00:46:00] some help. It’s really, really necessary. I know that many beekeepers like to be working on their own, but it’s just a matter of taking care of your health. Do not try to handle these extremely heavy weights on your own.

Now, in the horizontal hive, because there are no additional boxes on top, you pull out frames of honey one at one at a time, instead of lifting a box with 10 frames, all at once. So instead of lifting 45 or 50 pounds or 70 pounds, you may be lifting 6, 7, 8 pounds at a time. So it’s much more approachable.

You know, I feel so good every time I receive an email from someone who is not physically capable of lifting heavy weights. For example, a veteran who is in a wheelchair for the rest of his life and he’s writing me a letter saying, you know, I never thought I would be able to do beekeeping because there is no way I can lift a 50 pound [00:47:00] box from a wheelchair, but now I can use horizontal hives because they require no heavy lifting.

So when you decide on which style of beehives to use in your operation, just to think this is the first very important consideration, are you comfortable with handling heavy weight? And you’ll say, well, if conventional hives require so much physical strength, then why is everyone using them?

Mm-hmm.

Well, the answer is that these hives are very good for large scale operations because they’re modular. You can put a box and you can remove the box. So for example, if you are loading a semi truck to take thousands of colonies to California to pollinate the elm treees, then yes, you want a hive that can be taken apart, so you just load a box on the pallet and ,stacks, pallets and forklifts and very efficiently you loaded a big truck and send them off to pollinate orchard [00:48:00] somewhere.

When they produced a crop of nectar there it’s convenient to be quickly taking off entire boxes so you can reshuffle the other boxes, put them on pallets, and move them onto your next pollination contract for the large scale commercial exploitation, these kinds are very convenient. Yeah, they may be somewhat stressful on the bees, but the whole system is so unnatural and hard on the bees that the hive model is almost the last thing you would be concerned about.

Mm-hmm.

But if it works well for someone with thousands of beehives, it doesn’t mean that you with a few hives or even with a few dozen hives, will necessarily want to use the same system.

It would almost be the same as, you know, because farmers are using 60 horsepower tractors. You have a garden in your backyard and you have wanting to till the 10 by 10 foot foot vegetable bed with a huge tractor, just because the [00:49:00] farmers do that. So each technology has its own limitations and its own benefits.

So these big industrial apiculture beekeeping many times is very different from what be practical or enjoyable for a small beekeeper. So I’m seeing that horizontal hives are very attractive to those who don’t want to grow their beekeeping into this industrial enterprise where you will be moving your hives all over the country.

But it doesn’t mean that you cannot have a commercial operation with horizontal hives. In Russia, for example, where I come from and where I learned beekeeping as a small boy from my uncle who used both vertical and horizontal hives. In Russia, the largest beekeeper in the country uses 10,000 beehives, and they’re all horizontal hives.

One thing that the value about that, and you can read more about it in the book s “Raising Honeybee Queens” and “Keeping Bees with a Smile,” [00:50:00] is that in addition to not having to lift heavy boxes, you have access to all frames there in the hive at once. It’s almost like playing a piano in a horizontal box, all of the frames are at your fingertips, and when you need to add more frames for honey or pull these frames when they’re full of honey, you can do this straight away without shuffling any boxes around.

Mm-hmm.

Now, not only shuffling the boxes around in the vertical hive is hard on the beekeeper, It’s quite stressful on the bees because they build the integrated nest and then all of a sudden this nest is dissected and broken into pieces. And when you restack the stack, you need to pay attention not to squeeze or smash and crash any bees between the boxes, which usually involves taking your smoker and giving a few puffs of smoke between the boxes so the bees get out of the way, and [00:51:00] then lowering this box back.

Which means that with one arm, you need to be holding a 50 pound box, with the other one, you do the smoker and you give the puff of smoke and just start, you need to be lowering that box exactly at that moment. It comes with practice, but again, it’s just an overkill for many small beekeepers. So we talked about the weight, we talked about the accessibility of each of the frame.

Of course, the next consideration in favor of horizontal hives for smaller beekeepers is that the vertical hive being a modular hive requires more skill on the part of the beekeeper because you are in charge of changing the volume of the nest of the bees.

Mm-hmm.

If you do it through early in a vertical stack, hi, you put too much volume on top of the existing boxes and the warm air from the lower box rises in the top, and the bees have [00:52:00] trouble warming the lower box and they do need to warm it to 95 degrees because this is the temperature they incubate their brood their baby bees at.

If you put that box too late, the bees run out of room and they have nowhere to store that honey harvest.

In a horizontal hive, because there is no heat loss vertically up, you can add all of these frames up front and let the bees laterally grow into them at their own pace without having to check on them every seven days.

Mm-hmm.

That means that instead of opening your hive every seven or 14 days, you can leave it alone and go on the summer vacation or do other things.

The bees are all set up for successful year, so it requires less maintenance and less management. It doesn’t require less management because it’s a system that is only for beginners, but it is just a simpler approach to [00:53:00] managing your colonies. Again, that’s closer to how they live in nature. In nature, nobody manages them at all. So basically giving them a cavity in which they do their thing, and all of these books on the natural beekeeping and horizontal hives will show you that instead of weekly visits to the hives, you can leave these alone for the whole summer and maybe open the box two, three times the entire year.

Again, it may sound very strange to someone who is familiar with conventional beekeeping approach, but I can tell you from my own experience and from experiences of many other beekeepers using horizontal hive model, that it is completely feasible. And that’s another reason why this is attracting so many people interested in giving bees a good home. Yes, having some return, but bees come first. You want to give them good living conditions and then the results will speak for themselves.

Jessica Mitchell: Between horizontal and vertical hives, [00:54:00] is there a big difference with how much area is required to have horizontal hives on your property versus vertical ones?

Leo Sharashkin: In terms of the footprint, if you are talking about that.

Jessica Mitchell: Right.

Leo Sharashkin: Well, they’ll probably require, the horizontal hive will require three feet by two feet footprint, and the vertical hive will require one and a half by two feet area, but this is not really a huge difference.

Jessica Mitchell: Right.

Leo Sharashkin: But more importantly, of course, it depends on what they have around. And then in terms of the area that the bees fly to, to forage, it’ll be exactly the same for the vertical and horizontal hive.

So, no, it’s inconsequential in terms of the footprint of the hive. And for the foraging area, it’ll be the same, which is by the way, about two miles in all directions from the beehive. So if you are thinking of whether there are enough wildflowers to sustain honeybees [00:55:00] or how many hives you can have in one spot, it’s not about how much space you have in your backyard. It’s about how rich is the nectar flow around the bees, and how many other beekeepers are around you that are having bees that forage in the same area.

Mm-hmm.

If you have a diverse cabinet and not many beekeepers around, you can probably go to about 50 hives in your location before you start production per beehive from tapering off.

[00:55:29] Introducing Bees to the Hive

Jessica Mitchell: What does the introduction to these beehives look like? If you capture a local wild swarm? Do you have to behave a little bit differently around these bees while you’re getting them acclimated to their new homes? Or is it very similar in comparison if you were working with commercialized bees, for example?

Leo Sharashkin: So, Jessica just emphasize that I’m not really promoting or advocating horizontal hives as the only or the best way of [00:56:00] keeping bees. This is something that I use myself. This is something that I see a lot of value for small or medium size beekeepers, but many people’s preferences and their expectations are different.

So that’s totally fine if you use vertical height. Mm-hmm. So the reason I’m saying that is that it doesn’t mean that you can only use a swarm trap as we discussed for catching local bees with the view of lodging them in horizontal hives, you can actually use one of these 10 frame deep boxes for vertical hive as a swarm catcher.

Mm-hmm.

So if you have some of that equipment already purchased, so you have some of it lying around there because your bees died in the previous winter, just clean it and put it on the tree the same way as you would do with their specialized swarm catcher. So if you caught your bees in that commercial bee box and you plan to keep them in the vertical hive, you take them down [00:57:00] from the tree and you put them on a hive stand, and then you start adding boxes vertically as would be a normal procedure for managing that hive.

Mm-hmm.

If you are using a horizontal hive, it’s very similar except, because the horizontal hives do not take additional boxes on top, instead of adding more boxes on top, you would take all of the frames with the bees and with the honeycomb they’re building from your swarm catching box, and you would transfer them just lifting and lowering them into the bigger permanent hive.

And after you transferred all of these frames and gave bees more room to expand and to store more honey in there for themselves and for your harvest, you take that empty swarm catcher and you put it back on the tree because it’s not uncommon to catch more than one swarm on the same tree the [00:58:00] same summer.

Mm-hmm.

So the setup is very similar in terms of catching a swarm and then permanent hive, or whether use conventional vertical hives or horizontal hives. The approach is quite similar.

[00:58:14] Dealing with Wild Bees

Jessica Mitchell: Do you have to take any additional precautions when you’re dealing with wild bees?

Leo Sharashkin: Well, it depends on where you are.

Because these bees living in the wild, in some areas, they can be very defensive. I don’t want to use the word aggressive, because honeybees are not really aggressive.

Mm-hmm.

They’re defensive, meaning if you do not disturb them, they do not disturb you. We may call it aggressiveness because this is the impression we get, but really they start attacking you that’s only because you provoke that. So in some parts of the country especially in the south like Texas and parts of Arizona or Florida, but especially the southern dry areas, there is [00:59:00] some chance of catching a swarm of what’s called Africanized bees. This is the cross between two different races of the honeybee, the European strain and the African strain.

So these bees are known to be very defensive. To the point that mass media even called them killer bees because there were many instances of them killing livestock or even people by attacking them together when they’re being disturbed. So yeah, be prepared that if you are in the south, when you’re handling your swarm trap, dress up and wear a a bee jacket when you first come in contact with that swarm because just in case you caught these very hot bees, they can be a safety hazard.

This is not to say that you cannot keep these Africanized bees. This may not even be legal in all of the states, but many beekeepers actually love these Africanized bees because [01:00:00] if they can defend themselves from you, they can also defend themselves from parasites and predators and everything.

So they’re very hot, but at the same time, they’re very self-sufficient and good honey producers and very clean and disease free. So that book, “Honey from the Earth” that I mentioned has a chapter that shows you how Africanized honeybees are kept in some countries for honey production very successfully.

However, you would need to wear very good protection because they can sting in large numbers and also is not a suitable strain of these if you live in suburbs, because if you rouse a hive like that, they will sting people within a quarter mile of the hive being disturbed. But if you live far, far, far in the country where there are no neighbors or animals or people around for a quarter mile, that’s where many beekeepers put the Africanized bees just where you [01:01:00] can manage them with a lot of smoke and with a good bee protective gear and where they’re not going to harm other people. But if you live somewhere where you just cannot afford to have bees like that, unfortunately you would need them to change the queen. It means re-queening.

You would need to find and remove the queen from that colony and give them a queen from a more gentle strain. All of the genetics of the bees and the bee colony is determined by the queen and the sperm of the drones that impregnated her. But all of the worker bees and drones are children of the same queen bee, and they’re the generations turn over fairly quickly.

Mm-hmm.

Like in the summer can be between four and six weeks. That means if you have a colony that’s so defensive, you cannot work with it, it doesn’t mean you need to kill them all. You just need to replace the queen. And six weeks later, the generations will turn over [01:02:00] and it will become a much more manageable beehive.

Other than this exception of catching an Africanized swarm in the south, the wild bees are probably not going to be any different in terms of their temperament compared to the commercial bees. Some may be more defensive than others, but I have no problem coming across a reasonably defensive colony once in a while because I’ve seen this connection.

The colonies that are a little bit on the hot side always are tending to be much more disease resistant. Very good honey producers. So they’re very good bees to have, except they’re not as pleasurable to work with. But again, if you use horizontal hives that only require opening few times a year, you can still keep bees that are on the more defensive side without any special precautions because by disturbing them only few times a year, [01:03:00] you are not eliciting the same kind of violent response that you would get from these are more defensive bees as if you were opening their nest every seven days as in the vertical hives.

[01:03:12] Wrap-Up and Resources

Jessica Mitchell: Are there any other points you wanted to touch on about beehives or even local swarms?

Leo Sharashkin: I want to get that point across is that if you are interested in getting into beekeeping or if you have bees already, please realize that if the most important thing in doing it sustainably and without chemical treatments is to be using local bees.

And also please realize that if you are importing non-local bees or by just buying either packages or nucs that are being raised in a different climate and a different part of the country or even that are raised locally, but with non-local genetics, that if you do that, Then you are actually [01:04:00] contributing to the destruction of the local honeybee strains.

Mm-hmm.

Unfortunately, and that’s because the bees mate outside of the beehive. So if you have all of these wonderful wild bees are living around in the woods and they can be self-reliant and very disease resistant. But if enough people in this area keep bringing packages from a completely different climate with their commercial Italian honeybees and allow these non-local bees mate by sending of drones and eventually queens with the local ones, then these non-local drones will be destroying the adaptation of the local bees are in the next generation, and it’s a very big problem because there are parts of the country where the density of beekeepers who bring non-local bees, even hobby beekeepers, we are not talking about commercial guys with thousands of beehives. There may be enough hobby beekeepers who [01:05:00] act out of the best of intentions, they just want to have, you know, some honey for their children or to sell, they do what everybody else is doing by ordering bees. but they don’t realize that if you have enough people doing that, then the drones, the male bees from these non-local colonies will be meeting with the new queens from local colonies, and then the next generation will already be across that won’t have the same adaptations as the local bees.

If wonderful local honeybees that hybridize with non-local stock, they disappear. And this has happened in some parts of the country where the local strain of honeybees was wiped out through mixing with the non-local bees. So that’s my message to everyone. This is an option we all have of preserving working with the local honeybee bees.

But this is a very fragile resource. If you do the conventional way, you will become dependent [01:06:00] on chemical treatments and sugar feeding because these bees cannot really take care of their disease issues on their own without medications. But then you are undermining the very foundation of the natural approach, the presence of the local honeybee strains.

And the second thing I would like to share is that, you know, there comes a lot of responsibility with starting natural beekeeping. Catching swarms is actually the easiest part. But be prepared if you catch a swarm to be responsible beekeeper and give them a good home. For example, if you live in the north, the hive needs to be well insulated.

There are free plans on HorizontalHive.com for building insulated beehives. We’d also sell them to those who would like to have a hive that’s very well insulated, but you can kill a swarm by catching it and trying to keep it in Michigan or Wisconsin in a thin wall unprotected [01:07:00] hive. So if you start catching swarms, be prepared to become a good steward of the bees that are under your care.

Read “Keeping Bees with a Smile” book that introduces you to the most important points of natural beekeeping, like using local strains and insulating your beehives well and give the bees the kind of the experience in your hives that would make them as successful as living in the wilderness on their own.

Jessica Mitchell: Let’s say someone wants to transition into that more sustainable beekeeping model, but maybe they started off with more commercial practices. How would you recommend them really starting that transition?

Leo Sharashkin: Again, if you are talking about changing the genetics of your colony store, something that’s more sustainable and locally adapted, you have two options.

Again, you don’t need to kill your existing colonies or let them [01:08:00] collapse because of the infestation of the parasites. As long as you use the commercial stock, you need to do the commercially prescribed procedures of feeding them and medicating them. But if you get a source of local bees, for example, you catch a swarm and it turns out to be terrific and it’s just surviving without treatments year in and year out, you can breed additional queens and replace the queen in your commercial hives with something that’s more self-sustaining and treatment free. And six weeks later, the generation turned over and you have a colony that now shares that genetics from the local swarm that you caught. So this is in terms of the conversion of the honeybees.

It’s totally feasible to convert even larger operations to the local stock by breeding from your survivors. Even if you started with the local sorry, with the non-local bees. After a few years of breeding from your survivor stock, you can achieve some of the [01:09:00] same result if you have sent 10 hives and the five of them perished during the winter, but five of them survived, instead of buying five more packages to replenish the colonies that you lost during the winter, you need to multiply five of your survivor stock hives yourself. This way you know that their genetics and their disease adaptation was already better than just the commercial one. And if you keep breeding from your survivors for several years, the quality of bees will improve. It would not improve if you just keep buying the tender non-adaptive bees from elsewhere.

Mm-hmm.

In terms of the hive models, if you are interested in trying the horizontal hive with all of the benefits that we discussed, you don’t need to throw away your existing equipment. On HorizontalHive.com. In F A Q section, there is an illustrated guide how you convert the conventional American frames to the ones that go into [01:10:00] horizontal hives.

Also, there are free plans for building horizontal hives that take the same size of the frame that you already have. In your conventional American bee hives. So you can experience the simplicity and convenience of keeping business horizontal hives just with the equipment you already have. It’s a matter of you looking at what works better for you and what gives you a smile.

For example, my uncle in Russia who taught me beekeeping, he, used both vertical and horizontal hives for a long time, but as he was getting older, there are fewer and fewer vertical hives left. And now he will be turning 83 this year and he still keeps bees, but only horizontal hives are left because this is something he can comfortably manage at the age of 83.

Jessica Mitchell: And that’s great that there are so many ways that people, maybe they started out commercially with non-local bees, you know, they don’t have to just scrap everything that they’ve been working on, but they can make those transitions into more [01:11:00] sustainable

practices.

Leo Sharashkin: Yeah. And you know, also everything starts with information and education.

Mm-hmm.

Please read “Keeping Bees with a Smile” because it’ll answer most of your questions and give you the foundation for doing it successfully, because you may have been exposed to the information, how to do it the conventional way. Just read and see what alternatives you have. You know, maybe you will stick with your existing practices, which is fine, but at least you will be informed about what options you have.

And for many people, it’s an eyeopener because that’s not a kind of information that you usually get in conventional beekeeping. Books that are all about feeding your bees sugar, treating them with chemicals.

Jessica Mitchell: Now, where can people connect with you? I know we talked about your website, but are there any other places you wanted to plug or any other resources you wanted to recommend?

Leo Sharashkin: HorizontalHive.com, and please pay attention, it’s singular – [01:12:00] horizontal hive without “s” at the end. HorizontalHive.com is my website. There is the schedule of my speaking engagements that include, for example, Mother Earth News Fairs a couple of times every year. Also, I teach natural beekeeping classes at my apiary in southern Missouri several times a year, and that information is also available on the website.

Finally, I recognize that for many people it may be difficult to travel long distances to attend, so later this year we will start developing more digital content. Including webinars that we already held early this year very successfully. Where as you have question, practical questions as you get started, you can either take the online course or even have just a webinar with a question and answer sessions.

All of these are also announced on HorizontalHive.com. I really appreciate Mother Earth News, commitment of spreading information, not just on on [01:13:00] natural beekeeping, but on all of the sustainable practices because for me natural beekeeping is just the extension of the interest and living a non-destructive lifestyle on this beautiful planet.

Jessica Mitchell: Thank you so much for your time today, Leo, and I love this conversation and I learned so much from it too, and I know our listeners will as well.

[01:13:22] Podcast Credits

Carla Tilghman: Thanks for joining our conversation with Dr. Leo Sharashkin on natural beekeeping. For links to Leo’s website, books, and so much more information, go to www.motherearthnews.com/podcast.

Our podcast team is Carla Tillman and Jessica Mitchell. Music for this episode is epilogue by Josh Woodward, the Mother Earth News and Friends Podcast is a production of Ogden Publications. We here at Mother Earth News, enjoy hosting in-person fairs, and you can see a list of upcoming locations at [01:14:00] www.motherearthnewsfair.com.

We’re also excited to present you with the opportunity to get that self-reliant can-do content for the whole family right from your own home. All you have to do is go to online.MotherEarthNewsFair.com and sign up for your favorite online webinars, courses, and videos. Until next time, don’t forget to love your mother.

Meet Dr. Leo Sharashkin

Dr Leo Sharashkin is a full-time natural beekeeper and founder of the website Horizontal Hive. He’s editor of Keeping Bees With a Smile and Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives, comprehensive books on natural beekeeping. He writes for American Bee Journal, Bee Culture, Mother Earth News, and other major publications. Leo homesteads in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, catching wild swarms and keeping bees in low-maintenance horizontal hives. He holds a doctorate in forestry from the University of Missouri and teaches natural beekeeping at his apiary, across the United States, and internationally.

Additional Resources:

Learn more about Leo and natural beekeeping, including free hive plans and free guides, at Horizontal Hive.

Order Keeping Bees With a Smile and Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives.

Our Podcast Team:

Carla Tilghman and Jessica Mitchell
Music: “Epilogue ” by Josh Woodward

Listen to more podcasts at MOTHER EARTH NEWS PODCAST.

Check out the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Bookstore for more resources that may interest you.

Go to the MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR page for an opportunity to see some of our podcast guests live.

The Mother Earth News and Friends Podcasts are a production of Ogden Publications.