Keeping Bees with a Smile Principles and Practice of Natural Beekeeping

The second edition of bestselling Keeping Bees with a Smile shows beginner and practicing beekeepers how to attract local bee swarms, keep bees healthy and productive, build simple bee-friendly hives, and harvest honey without stressing bees. Chock-full of techniques for natural beekeeping.

This book should be on every beekeeper's bookshelf.
— HANK WILL, author, Plowing with Pigs, Editorial Director, Mother Earth News

Learn about natural methods of beekeeping with minimal work and no boxes to lift.
— MICHAEL BUSH, author, The Practical Beekeeper

IN THE SECOND EDITION of the bestselling beekeeping guide Keeping Bees with a Smile, Fedor Lazutin, one of Europe's most successful natural beekeepers, shares the bee-friendly approach to apiculture that is fun, healthful, rewarding, and accessible to all. This new edition includes dozens of color photographs, new hive management techniques, and an updated version of "Lazutin hive" plans. Additional coverage includes:

• Keeping bees naturally without interfering in their lives
• Starting an apiary for free by attracting local bee swarms
• Building low-maintenance hives that mimic how bees live in nature
• Keeping colonies healthy and strong without any drugs or sugar
• Helping bees to overwinter successfully even in harsh climates
• Enhancing local nectar plant resources
• Producing truly natural honey without robbing the bees
• Reversing the global bee decline...right in your backyard!

Keeping Bees with a Smile is an invaluable resource for apiculture beginners and professionals alike, complete with plans for making bee-friendly, well-insulated horizontal hives with extra- deep frames, plus other fascinating beekeeping advice you won't find anywhere else.

A blueprint for creating a harmonious relationship between bees and their human partners.
— Bonnie Morse, Director, Bee Audacious

Fedor Lazutin was a natural beekeeper, homesteader, and advocate for habitat restoration and sustainable living in Russia.

Leo Sharashkin, PhD, is a full-time natural beekeeper and founder of HorizontalHive.com. He has edited numerous books on natural beekeeping, writes for major magazines, and speaks internationally on bee-friendly beekeeping. He keeps bees in the Ozarks of southern Missouri.

To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending select New Society Publishers books to its readers. This book is one of them.