About Us

     I first started working with bees when I was 8 years old in 1960 in Arcata, California located on the coast not too far from the Oregon border. At that time the only problem was American Foulbrood from time to time but it was never a serious detriment to the bees. One hundred pounds per hive was not an uncommon yield. After getting a Bachelor degree in Entomology and Zoology and a Masters degree in Entomology at the University of California at Davis I came to Lawrence, Kansas in 1979. Here I got my PhD at the University of Kansas (KU) working under Dr. Charles Michener, the world’s foremost expert on bees. I studied and became familiar with the worldwide bee fauna and published about 50 scientifically refereed papers and three books. I was the curator and manager of the bee collection of the Natural History Museum at KU for 18 years starting in 1986.

     The last 20 years involved buying thousands of dollars of package honeybees from Georgia andTexas; nucs from Minnesotta and Russian queens from Iowas and losing them again and again each winter. I stopped keeping bees for a few years and then started again about 6 years ago. I started putting swarm trap hives out but they were only 20 liters in volume with no lemon oil lure and I caught only one swarm for 20 boxes.  After doing research and reviewing Dr. Thomas Seeley’s (Cornell University) and Dr. Leo Sharaskin’s (Horizontal Hive and feral bee advocate) I changed the swarm box specifications. Now about 90% of my boxes attract swarms with over 50 swarms caught in the last two years.