The biggest single pest / pathogen threat to the survival of colonies of the western honey bee is the varroa mite and the viruses it carries.

Since varroa arrived in Europe and America in the 1980s, most beekeepers have found it necessary to treat their colonie with chemicals in order to avoid heavy colony losses. But a minority of beekeepers have managed to care for their colonies without the use of chemicals and have done o with not just tolerable colony lo es, but with losses that are sometimes equal to or smaller than the losses of those beekeepers who treat with chemicals. With the help of thirty examples of treatment-free beekeepers in Europe and America, including famous name in varroa-resistant bee breeding, this book documents the encouraging success and growing popularity of beekeeping without chemicals, and details the bee husbandries of the beekeepers presented.

After a career in research biochemistry David Heaf settled in north-west Wales where he works as a translator and, with his wife Pat, manages a large vegetable garden. He took up beekeeping in 2003 with the ational hive, but a few years fat r switched to the Wam! hiv , now wintering about 10 of them. In 2010, orthern Bee Books published his book The Bee-friendly Beekeeper and in 2013 invited him to write a manual on atural Beekeepirzg with the Warré Hive.