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.
"Right from the start, this book takes you on a journey that is
fascinating and thought-provoking. . . The McEwens demonstrate
creative, out-of-the-box thinking and challenge traditional ways of
keeping bees."—American Bee Journal
"Raising Resilient Bees challenges accepted practices in
commercial beekeeping, based on decades of experience on an organic
farm. . . [It's] inspiring. It will strike a chord with those who
feel an instinctive love for the land and a desire to follow the
most harm-free practices in agriculture."—Foreword Reviews
“Beekeepers and the bee-curious alike will revel in this fresh
offering from long-time honey bee stewards Eric and Joy McEwen. In
a conversational and approachable fashion, this husband-and-wife
team gracefully offers up solutions to some of the most difficult
contemporary beekeeping problems. Beautiful photos and colorful
illustrations provide vital basics for those new to the craft, as
well as creative ideas for advanced beekeepers to mull over.
Opening this book is opening a window into a resilient and
regenerative beekeeping operation. Your bees will thank you for
it.”—Sarah Red-Laird, founder and executive program director, the
Bee Girl Organization (BGO); past president, Western Apicultural
Society
“Joy and Eric McEwen give a vivid, practical, evidence-based
demonstration of how a commercial beekeeping enterprise of over 600
hives can work in a way that is more ecologically sustainable and
bee-friendly, while remaining profitable enough to support a family
and employees. 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
“Raising Resilient Bees offered me a new way to consider honey
bees. My previous framework was borrowed from Dr. Tom Seeley, who
looked at the honey bee colony as a whole; something more than just
individuals strung together. Eric and Joy McEwen have taken this a
step further with their concept of the ‘hive bee-ing,’ which is not
just the colony but also the environment in which it is housed and
with which it interacts intimately. 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
prioritizes the bee above the beekeeper. Resilience means being
adaptable—finding new and better solutions to old problems.
Adaptability. That is the best quality a honey bee, and a
beekeeper, can have.”—Kim Flottum, author of The Backyard
Beekeeper; host, Beekeeping Today Podcast
“Raising Resilient Bees shares the McEwens’ quest and commitment to
steward bees respectfully and responsibly. This guide is a
mellifluous manifesto that touches upon the diversity and majesty
of what it means to work in tandem with our honey bee relatives and
Mother Nature. May stewards near and far find inspiration and
motivation in the McEwens’ path of purpose, and may they learn to
nurture their own beekeeping journeys through the Diggin’ Livin’
teachings.”—Melanie M. Kirby, founder and director, Adaptive Bee
Breeders Alliance
“Raising Resilient Bees is a comprehensive guide to beekeeping that
emphasizes sustainable and ethical practices. Drawing on their
years of experience as beekeepers and farmers, the McEwens offer
practical advice on everything from setting up a hive to harvesting
honey. This isn’t just a how-to manual. This book also explores the
important roles bees play in our ecosystems and the threats they
face, as well as guidance on how to support and protect these
crucial pollinators. Raising Resilient Bees is a must-read for
anyone interested in beekeeping, sustainability, and the natural
world.”—Penny Livingston, permaculturist, beekeeper, and
educator
“Eric and Joy are a rare breed; professional beekeepers taking a
creative and nuanced approach to commercial beekeeping. In Raising
Resilient Bees, they consider the entire cycle of the professional
beekeeper’s life and work with a sustainable focus, from sourcing
salvaged timber for beehives to breeding locally adapted bees,
modifying conventional hive designs to crafting high-value bee
products. Eric and Joy’s hard work and deep commitment to learning
from their bees and the local environment will be an inspiration to
any aspiring beekeeper and to those wishing to transition to more
sustainable practices.”—Tim Malfroy, owner, Malfroy’s Gold and
Natural Beekeeping Australia
“Much akin to the wondrous distillation that honey bees perform
while alchemizing nectar from flowers into concentrated pearls of
sweet, nutritious, and healing honey, Joy and Eric have distilled
decades of earnest, caring, and arduous work tending their apiaries
into pearls of valuable wisdom. As a seed grower, I have long
marveled at the unique cosmic dance between bee and flower that
gives rise to the seed, and this book amplifies this sense of
wonder. If you are holding this book in your hands, then I presume
that you too will be grateful for this valuable contribution to the
art and science of natural beekeeping.”—Don Tipping, farmer and
seedsman, Siskiyou Seeds
“In Raising Resilient Bees, Eric and Joy not only provide us with a
bee-centric approach to beekeeping but also a human-centric one. As
farmers, our desire to practice a method of agriculture that seeks
to regenerate our natural systems and resources rather than exploit
them requires us to consider how to bring our whole human selves to
the task. Raising Resilient Bees is not just a how-to manual on
holistic beekeeping for hobbyists and professionals alike, but a
manifesto on how we, as humans, can practice respect, humility, and
love, in service to the earth and each other.”—Beth Hoinacki,
farmer, Goodfoot Farm; president of Demeter Advisory Board,
Biodynamic Demeter Alliance
“Few relationships are as complex, and indeed as agonized over, as
that between humans, honey bees, and our shared environment. This
lovely book—a detailed guide, an homage, and a story all in
one—offers huge insight to anyone currently beekeeping or
considering entering into that great interspecies relationship with
a view beyond the purely economic. Rich in detail, photos,
diagrams, and the authors’ learnings—often from their own
challenging experiments in bee breeding and care—Raising Resilient
Bees conveys the McEwens’ love for bees and their admirable desire
to ensure that the lessons learned from their good and bad times
help others. We never do stop learning, and this book, part of a
great beekeeping canon, will contribute immensely to your own
learning journey.”—Vicki Hird, writer and campaigner; author of
Rebugging the Planet
“In this important new handbook, Eric and Joy McEwen provide a
comprehensive approach to the extraordinary world of beekeeping and
honey production. These two long-time practitioners offer detail
and instruction for both the commercial farm enterprise as well as
the homestead producer. It is authoritative, delightfully readable,
and will be a lifelong reference.”—Garry Stephenson, professor
emeritus, Center for Small Farms & Community Food Systems, Oregon
State University
“A Jacqueline Freeman journey through some super solid information.
Eric and Joy McEwen cover all the bee basics and the challenges one
should expect when getting started with the species. They offer a
very genuine depiction, through real-life experiences, of what it
takes to manage bees sustainably. Raising Resilient Bees is a
testament to regenerative beekeeping by way of responsible
practices, understanding of place, and most of all, the
appreciation of deep bee ecology.”—Rob Keller, Napa Valley Bee
Co.
"Simply stated, Raising Resilient Bees: Heritage Techniques to
Mitigate Mites, Preserve Locally Adapted Genetics, and Grow Your
Apiary is essential reading for anyone who aspires to
keep bees, and has a great deal of practical value as a resource
for even the more experienced beekeeper. Nicely illustrated with
color photographic images, informatively comprehensive,
exceptionally 'reader friendly in organization and presentation,
Raising Resilient Bees is especially and unreservedly recommended
for personal, professional, community, college, and university
library bee keeping collections and as a textbook for supplemental
Animal Husbandry and Entomology curriculum studies lists."—Midwest
Book Review
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