There are fewer and fewer unpolluted lands in the US that are far removed from agricultural and industrial pollution where the bees can freely forage in pristine forests and meadows uncontaminated with pesticides or herbicides. ForestBeehive natural beekeeping apiary was inspired by this beautiful unspoiled land adjacent to a wildlife sanctuary with its rich Spring-to-Fall nectar resources for our honeybees. Just as this land is unspoiled by human-engineered chemical pollutants, we keep our honeybees unspoiled by any conventional chemical treatments or conventional sugar-feedings.

While ForestBeehive is our new apiary, many years ago in Eastern Europe when varroa mite was already rampant and killing off their standard Carpatian bees (aka Russian bees) in droves, a lot of conventional beekeepers there were widely using a so-called “natural” formic acid treatment which, by the way, the locals also widely used then … to kill off cockroaches…

At the time I was helping out at a remote apiary where they successfully practiced natural no-treatment beekeeping (1) they only used wild survivor bees from swarms and (2) they used stationary insulated deep Ukrainian horizontal hives with 36 frames each – was great for winterization and easy to manage with no more than 3 hive inspections per year.

At our new Central Maine-based ForestBeehive, we use swarm-caught wild survivor honeybees.

– BORIS THE BEE GUY