Beekeeping In Harmony With Nature: Book Review

Introduction

We’re bracing ourselves for gales on Saturday here in the Scottish Highlands. Today is warm, humid and calm. The air is so still and the leaves motionless that it’s hard to believe they will be dancing like demons in a couple of days. But the weather forecasters are up the mark, even to the hour that rain commences. No excuses for hives blowing over this weekend, we have been warned.

Apimondia Medal Winners

Congratulations to the Apimondia winners for their contributions to beekeeping literature; Northern Bee Books for The Beekeepers Quarterly under the editorship of Norman Carreck and Andrea Quigley, Lesley Jacques for Where do the Bees go? and Steve Riley for The Honey Bee Solution to Varroa, all published by Northern Bee Books. Congratulations to everyone else not mentioned here who wrote books and entered them for Apimondia 2025.

Here is a lovely photo of Steve receiving his award. I’m nearly at the end of his handbook for the third time. I mentioned in a previous blog that this book would be my guide to beekeeping this year and it has not let me down. I’ve followed the advice and counted varroa assiduously which has led me to discover which colonies are best at chewing out pupae and keeping varroa levels down. The hardest part of the year has been going with the advice that high levels of varroa on the bottom board at the end of summer indicate that the bees are clearing out varroa at the end of the season and levels should settle down again.

I can tell from the BroodMinder temperature sensors that the queens are reducing egg laying and all the colonies are preparing for winter. The brood nest temperatures have all fallen below the normal ranges for the productive season. Fingers crossed till spring arrives.

Book Review

I’m privileged to have been invited to review this excellent new book which is so relevant for the many beekeepers who are already working towards achieve treatment-free beekeeping, for the many who would like to but don’t know where to start, and everyone else who keeps bees and is open to learning about different ways of managing them.

One of the remarkable things about this book is that it has been translated from Polish to English by Professor Stephen Martin using Google Translate. Don’t let that fool you into thinking it was a doddle for him. Far from it, it’s a complicated process arranging the contents so that they read with clarity and without anything being lost in translation. He’s done a great job of this.

Title: Beekeeping in Harmony with Nature: The Evolutionary Solution To The Varroa Problem

Author: Bartołomiej Maleta, Translated by Stephen Martin

Published by Northern Bee Books, 2025

ISBN: 978-1-9192004-0-8

Paperback, 392 pages

Cost: £55

Available from Northern Bee Books and other bookstores.

Beekeeping in Harmony with Nature: The Evolutionary Solution To The Varroa Problem by Bartołomiej Maleta is a well-argued perspicuous treatise on why we should stop using chemicals and instead allow the bees to combat varroa themselves. This is research-based science communication at its best and written in an engaging style. The translator is to be commended for making this work not only accessible to English speaking readers, but in a form that reads smoothly and clearly.

The author is a Polish beekeeper dedicated to cooperating with others to promote sustainable beekeeping and develop varroa resistant bees. He is the co-founder of several groups focussing on nature-based beekeeping that endeavour to manage apiaries as close to how honey bees would function in the wild without our assistance. Maleta also highlights the need to promote and rebuild colonies of free-living honey bees in our environments.

There are six chapters which are long but relate to particular themes and their subheadings are signposted in the content pages. The generous footnotes are particularly useful and help the reader keep easily on track without having to search an index at the end of the book.

The information flows in a logical order which I read from cover-to cover in almost one sitting because the content was so captivating, but one could also dip into this book for specific information. It is well illustrated with clear photographs, diagrams and tables. However, if there is to be a revised version, numbering chapters and using a different colour scheme for the contents pages would make navigation easier. White on an orange background is not easy for some people to read, especially with a small font size. Otherwise, the orange headings and page numbers stand out attractively in the body of the book. The front cover immediately attracts attention with the profile of Charles Darwin setting the scene for what follows.

Chapter 1 addresses bee health encompassing Darwinian beekeeping and highlighting the work by Professor Seeley on how honey bees live and survive in the wild without human intervention. We learn so much here about the evolutionary perspective and the differences between the environments of wild and managed colonies.

Chapter 2 deals with honey bee homes and how beekeepers can provide similar accommodation to what our colonies would choose themselves if they could. It is quite alarming to realise how much we unwittingly alter the hive environment and interfere with the natural defences of its microbiome when we use harsh natural acids such as oxalic acid.  Oxalic acid not only kills varroa but also good bacteria and fungus crucial for healthy natural immunity to disease.

Chapter 3 covers the internal hive structure and discusses all aspects of foundation and foundation-free beekeeping highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

In Chapter 4 we discover what inspired Maleta’s journey into beekeeping without chemicals and we learn from the accounts of his own beekeeping challenges.

Chapter 5 is a journey across the world examining populations of honey bees living without varroa treatments and why they do. We discover the influencing dynamics and the differences and similarities between these populations. It also features some of the pioneering beekeepers who have impressed the author by their successes in varied settings.

The final chapter explains what varroa resistant traits are and how we can transition to treatment-free beekeeping. Maleta draws on research and the experiences of many other beekeepers to inform us in a helpful non-prescriptive way. He raises awareness, presents the facts, and encourages the individual beekeeper to choose for themselves the best way forward.

Maleta has reached beyond his aim; “My goal is to popularise knowledge about natural methods of keeping and breeding bees and to show a different perspective”. This is a very important publication and relevant to every beekeeper whether or not they intend to pursue treatment-free beekeeping.