Keeping Bees on Every Farm the Easy Way
Published in Farming Magazine, Spring 2019,Vol.19, Issue 1,No. 73 I live in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, but my farm is in southcentral Kentucky. I am also a beekeeper, but my bees are almost 6400 miles away. Yet I keep bees, I keep them responsibly, and I do not really have to worry about over-wintering, frequent inspections, and all the other beekeeping “duties” that make conventional beekeeping such an onerous and expensive task. In fact, my guidebook for beekeeping was written in the 19th century by a French beekeeper, Georges de Layens, who developed a hive known today as the “Layens Hive.” De Layens describes how he set up beeyards that only had to be visited twice a year, spring and fall, to inspect them and harvest honey, both of which only took a few minutes. As a small-scale, organic farmer whose entire 15-acre farm is dedicated to bees, and whose apiary consists at present of about a dozen hives, I have come to appreciate the powerful role that bees play not only in na