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

With over 100 colour 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 by naturally rearing 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 centre
• 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.

About the Author

Eric McEwen heads the beekeeping operation for Diggin' Livin' Farm & Apiaries. He holds a bachelor of science degree in botany and plant pathology from Oregon State University. He has spent the last 20 years experimenting with the development of organic management practices while tending approximately 700 honey bee colonies. A former mentor for the Oregon State University Master Beekeeper Program, Eric has served as the Southern Oregon Representative on the Oregon State Beekeepers Association administrative board. He is a member of the Adaptive Bee Breeders Alliance, a SARE-funded consortium of honey bee professionals and academics collaborating on stock improvement focused breeding efforts. He is the originator and manufacturer of Natural Nest beehives, an improved style of 8-frame Langstroth equipment for organic beekeeping. Eric is also a trained botanist and naturalist who loves the wild side of the great outdoors.

Joy McEwen manages Diggin' Livin' Farm & Apiaries, a homestead, organic farm, and commercial beekeeping operation. She holds two bachelor of science degrees, as well as a master of science in environmental science from Oregon State University. When she isn't tending hives or farming, she works as an apitherapist with a practice in southern Oregon and makes a line of jun beverages called Honey Bee Brews. Joy is a committee member on the USDA Farm Service Agency board for Josephine and Jackson Counties, Oregon, and serves as a board member on the Illinois Valley Watershed Council, as well as a board member for the American Apitherapy Society.

Diggin' Livin' is the McEwens' farm in Takilma, Oregon, located on the pristine Illinois River, where the McEwens manufacture their woodenware and teach beekeeping and apitherapy. Joy and Eric live there with their three daughters, Fern, Clarysage, and Tulsi. Their website is digginlivin.com.