Raising Resilient Bees: Heritage Techniques to Mitigate Mites, Preserve Locally Adapted Genetics, and Grow Your Apiary - Paperback

by Eric McEwen (Author), Joy McEwen (Author), Walter S. Sheppard (Foreword by)

With over 100 color photographs and illustrations, Raising Resilient Bees is the comprehensive source for new and experienced beekeepers, offering a sustainable, natural, and repeatable model of care for hive health and production.

Global pests and diseases present an unprecedented challenge for the modern honey bee. Hobby and commercial beekeepers alike continue to experience troubling rates of mortality for their colonies, with potentially deleterious consequences for the stability of our wider ecosystems and overall food security. It is time for a global focus on restoring the health of the shared apiary through naturally reared, genetically diverse, and resilient lines of bees.

Raising Resilient Bees establishes these parameters and provides guidance for new and experienced beekeepers alike to translate these goals into real practice, thereby safeguarding the honey bee from the unknown threats of the future.

Authors Eric and Joy McEwen take two decades worth of beekeeping experience, experiments, and professional production to deliver groundbreaking methods in queen-rearing, varroa mite management, and Natural Nest hive design. Inside, you'll discover:

• Revived and adapted heritage Integrated Pest Management techniques
• How to naturally rear queens and select for resilient, mite-resistant genetic lines without relying on swarming or grafting
• Key tenets of apicentric beekeeping
• Advice for establishing a flourishing and sustainable business with beekeeping at the center
• How to naturally rear bees with distinctive characteristics suitable to their locale

As in large-scale agriculture, the trend toward genetic homogenization is having long-term implications for bees' capacity to withstand diverse environmental stressors. With expert advice, enthusiasm, and easy-to-follow instructions, Raising Resilient Bees delivers important and timely information for every beekeeper to create a healthier future.

"Vivid, practical, evidence-based . . . . Biodynamic and organic beekeepers will applaud the authors' use of 'natural nest hives' with single-size boxes and vertically uninterrupted brood nests, populated with locally adapted bees and naturally reared queens."--David Heaf, author of The Bee-Friendly Beekeeper; bee-friendly.co.uk

"The McEwens look at every aspect of a honey bee's life in this book--pest and disease issues, living space, the genetics of resistance and tolerance, qualities of successful queens, optimal feeding, and seasonal management that fits the bee above the beekeeper."--Kim Flottum, author of The Backyard Beekeeper; podcast producer, Growing Planet Media

Author Biography

Eric McEwen heads the beekeeping operation for Diggin' Livin' Farm & Apiaries located in the Illinois River Valley of southwest Oregon. He has spent the last twenty years experimenting with the development of organic management practices for up to 700 honey bee colonies. A former mentor for the Oregon State University Master Beekeeper Program, Eric currently serves as the southern Oregon representative on the Oregon State Beekeepers Association administrative board. He is the originator and manufacturer of Natural Nest Beehives, an improved style of eight-frame Langstroth equipment for organic beekeeping. Eric is also a trained naturalist who loves the wild side of the great outdoors.

Joy McEwen owns and manages Diggin' Livin' Farm & Apiaries, a homestead, organic farm, and commercial beekeeping operation. She holds a master of science in environmental science with emphasis in environmental education from Oregon State University. Joy's background in organic farming and the study of local food systems led to her passion for beekeeping and connecting people with local foods. She is a practicing apitherapist and makes a line of jun beverages called Honeybee Brews. Joy is a committee member on the USDA Farm Service Agency board for Josephine and Jackson Counties, Oregon, and has served as a board member on the Illinois Valley Watershed Council for the past four years.

Diggin' Livin' is the McEwens' farm in Takilma, Oregon. It is a pollinator sanctuary and the home of Honeybee Healing Arts and Education Center. Joy and Eric live there with their three daughters Fern, Clarysage, and Tulsi.