Natural Beekeeping Magic

from the Reskillience Podcast with Catie Payne

 When Adrian Iodice was invited to speak on the Reskillience podcast with Catie Payne, he was thrilled to share his journey and passion for natural beekeeping. Adrian transitioned from running a bar in St. Kilda to discovering his true calling as a natural beekeeper and educator – a path that began with a profound connection to bees during his travels through Australia’s Kimberleys, where Aboriginal stockmen dubbed him “Gallagher man” (the sugar bag man) after witnessing his uncanny ability to find native beehives.

In this conversation, Adrian shares how natural beekeeping differs fundamentally from conventional commercial practices. Rather than focusing primarily on honey production, natural beekeeping prioritizes the wellbeing of bees, allowing them to build natural comb, maintain their optimal temperature, and follow their natural reproductive cycles through swarming. He explains why he prefers the Kenyan Top Bar hive design, which respects the integrity of the bee colony as a living organism.

The podcast touches on many aspects of Adrian’s philosophy – from the spiritual connection between humans and bees to practical approaches for handling varroa mite without chemicals, as well as insights on sourcing ethical honey. Most importantly, listeners will come away understanding that bees are not just insects but intelligent beings deserving of our respect and care, and that by listening to them rather than exploiting them, we can develop a meaningful relationship that benefits both species.

You can listen to the podcast here:      

Or you can read this summarized version of the transcript:

What Is Natural Beekeeping?

Natural beekeeping is a method of caring for bees that prioritizes their wellbeing over honey production. While conventional beekeeping often focuses on maximizing honey yields, natural beekeeping takes a fundamentally different approach – one that respects the colony as a living organism with its own intelligence and natural behaviors.

As Adrian explains, “What natural beekeeping really is about is trying to keep bees as naturally as possible. It’s still beekeeping. We’re still keeping bees. But how do we keep bees in a way that they can live and express themselves more naturally? That’s really what it’s about.”

This philosophy influences everything from hive design to honey harvesting techniques, creating a more harmonious relationship between beekeeper and bees. 

After years of conventional beekeeping using standard methods, Adrian traveled to Germany to study biodynamic beekeeping approaches. “I came away from that course blown away,” Adrian recalls. “I thought, ‘What crap have I been learning?’ It was terrible.” This revelation inspired him to bring natural beekeeping methods back to Australia and develop courses to teach others.

Understanding Bees as a Superorganism

One of the most transformative concepts in natural beekeeping is understanding bee colonies as superorganisms rather than collections of individual insects. Adrian references the work of German biologist Jürgen Tautz, author of “The Buzz About Bees,” who describes bees as “a mammal in many bodies.”

“Bees maintain the temperature around the brood at about 35-36 degrees, like a mammal,” Adrian explains. “They produce a milk-like substance – the royal jelly and brood jelly. It’s almost like milk, and they secrete it out of two glands in their head. They have a womb in a sense, and they protect that womb. That’s the nest area where the queen lays her eggs and raises the babies.”

This perspective changes how we view bee reproduction. While many people think bees multiply when the queen lays eggs, natural beekeepers recognize that the colony itself reproduces through swarming – splitting into two colonies, much like a cell divides.

“We need to consider the colony as an organism and each bee as a cell of that organism, not another organism,” Adrian emphasizes. “When we start looking at the bee colony as an organism, it’s almost like looking at them as a pet cat or a pet dog. They’re alive and moving and expanding. They’re growing with the seasons – spring and summer with that in-breath, they’re expanding out. And then the out-breath in autumn and winter, they’re contracting.”

This understanding fundamentally changes the beekeeper’s approach. When you recognize you’re looking inside an organism during hive inspections, there’s a natural sense of reverence and care that develops. You begin to notice how the colony expands and contracts with the seasons, and how beekeeping practices should support rather than disrupt these natural rhythms.

Conventional vs. Natural Hive Management

The conventional Langstroth hive, with its stacked boxes and removable frames, was designed with honey production efficiency in mind. But as Adrian discovered, this design creates significant problems for the bees themselves.

“I moved away from Langstroth hives because of squashing bees. It’s really hard to put a Langstroth hive back together without harming them,” Adrian explains. “When you take the roof off, the first thing that happens is all the beautiful hot air rushes out of the hive. Bees maintain temperature around the nest area constantly. If it’s freezing outside, they’re vibrating their wing muscles, heating themselves up to about 42 degrees and permeating that heat. But they need to eat honey and nectar to get the energy to do that.”

The standard Langstroth hive design exacerbates temperature loss. “The Langstroth hive is only 22mm thick. That in itself is just not good enough,” Adrian says. “When we rip that roof off, every bee in that colony knows you’re there because that hot air just took off out the chimney and a gust of cool air rushed in through the front door.”

This disruption triggers alarm pheromones throughout the colony. Then, when inspecting the brood area, beekeepers must separate the boxes, completely pulling apart the organism living inside. When putting the hive back together, it’s nearly impossible not to crush bees.

“They’re all over the edges. They’re underneath on the edges. As you lift each box, they bloody weigh a lot, you try to shuffle them on there and slowly slide them across so you’re not crushing bees. But it’s still crushing bees. It gets them trapped in the gap and you’re cutting bees in half. Every time without fail, putting a Langstroth hive back together crushes bees.”

This repeated trauma teaches bees to fear human interaction. “What are we actually telling the bees? What are they learning from that? They’re learning there’s the bastard coming to kill us. And they start to react that way. They become defensive and suspicious of us.”

To manage these defensive bees, conventional beekeepers use smoke, which further confuses and stresses the colony. “We’re telling them there’s a fire coming, so they get busy panicking. The smoke covers their alarm pheromones. They’re confused. We put it all back together and think, ‘That was a great beekeeping session.’ But the bees are angry, flying around, trying to sting us, and just not happy.”

The Kenyan Top Bar Advantage

After experiencing these problems with conventional hives, Adrian transitioned to using Kenyan Top Bar hives, which offer significant benefits for both bees and beekeepers.

“The Kenyan Top Bar hive is a horizontal hive, not a vertical hive, so we don’t stack boxes on top of each other,” Adrian explains. “We have one big trough with a whole heap of top bars in it, and the bees build comb off each top bar.”

This design respects bees’ natural tendency to keep their brood area (nest) near the entrance of the hive and honey away from the entrance. “When I visit a top bar hive, I move what’s called a follower board, which is a fake partition wall in that trough. I can access the honey area directly without annoying the brood area.”

This approach preserves the integrity of the nest environment. “I’m not constantly losing a whole lot of nest scent and heat that’s maintained around the brood. In a conventional Langstroth hive, when the roof’s taken off to access any part of the hive, all that hot air gushes out and it’s gone. The bees have to work really hard to bring that heat back in around the nest area.”

The Kenyan Top Bar hive offers a gentler alternative. “We’re taking the side wall off, opening the door so to speak, and accessing the honeycombs from one end of the hive as opposed to from the top. It makes a huge difference to the overall health of the colony.”

Another key difference is that natural beekeeping allows bees to build their own comb rather than using foundation sheets. “In conventional beekeeping, a wax foundation sheet is placed in frames, and bees build their comb on that sheet. The reason for that foundation sheet is to give bees a straight line to follow so the frame can be pulled out straight.”

But bees naturally build in varied directions. “They build in any direction they feel is right. It might be a curvature or a zigzag shape. They’re pretty creative and amazing when you look at natural hives in hollows.”

In a Kenyan Top Bar hive, bees build natural comb hanging from the top bars. “A top bar is just a bit of timber about 36mm wide going across a trough. We put a bead of wax down the center of each top bar, and the bees follow that and build combs. They use sacred geometry to build beautiful natural formed combs.”

The Amazing Process of Making Beeswax

Understanding how bees make wax reveals another remarkable aspect of these creatures. “Bees need to consume a whole heap of honey or nectar to produce fat,” Adrian explains. “They’ve got these glands down their abdomen on the underside of their bellies – eight wax glands, four on each side. When they eat a lot of nectar, it makes them fat. Then they start secreting these little wax platelets, and wax is bee fat.”

The process continues as a community effort. “Their sisters come and grab the wax, chew it all up, add propolis to it, add enzymes and all sorts of goodies. They chew it up, make it malliable, and then start building their beautiful honeycombs.”

Adrian shares a poetic perspective on this process, connecting it to sunlight and energy: “Grandfather sun wakes up in the morning, sticks his head up, and his rays, his energy, his beautiful light rays hit the plants. Those plants start to grow and suck in those rays of energy. The plants start to stretch and yawn in the morning and produce nectar. That nectar is a direct correlation with the sun’s energy.”

This energy transformation continues through the bees. “The bee collects that nectar, brings it home, passes it to her sisters. They pass it around, all have a taste, and reduce the moisture out of it until it becomes thick honey stored in the wax. Those bees building the comb get fat on pure carbohydrates and start to sweat out these little platelets of the sun’s rays (the wax).”

This connection between sunlight, plants, bees, and wax explains the historical importance of beeswax candles. “When we melt that wax down and make candles, every time we light a candle, we’re just igniting the sun’s light again. That’s why churches and monasteries kept bees – they wanted the wax to make candles and light up their temples.”

Natural Honey Harvesting

The honey harvesting approach differs dramatically between conventional and natural beekeeping. In conventional beekeeping, frames are removed, the wax cappings are taken off each cell with a hot knife, and the frames are put into a centrifugal extractor that spins quickly to extract the honey. The empty frames are then returned to the hive for bees to refill, creating a quick turnaround of honey production.

Natural beekeeping takes a different approach. “Natural beekeeping’s not about honey collection,” Adrian emphasizes. “We’re not paying our mortgage with honey. We’re just keeping a couple of hives at home, putting a bit of honey on our toast, giving a few jars to friends.”

When harvesting honey in a Kenyan Top Bar hive, “We take the combs out – only the honey combs, nothing with baby bees in it. We cut the combs off the top bar and crush it up, squeeze the honey out through a sieve or muslin cloth or using a honey press.”

This crushing method produces superior honey. “We’ve done taste tests. We’ve got mates blindfolded and said, ‘Which one do you like?’ People always pick the one that’s been crushed. It has a buttery taste to it because the wax is bee fat.”

The crushing method preserves more of the honey’s natural enzymes and flavors compared to extraction by centrifuge, even when comparing honey from the same hive. This traditional method connects us to the historical practices of honey harvesting that predate modern equipment.

Swarming: Natural Reproduction

Natural beekeeping embraces swarming, while conventional beekeeping tries to prevent it. “The Department of Primary Industries encourages beekeepers to kill or suppress swarming,” Adrian notes. “I get it – if you’re living in the suburbs and your bees are swarming all the time, your neighbor might be anaphylactic to bees or might not want bees in their backyard.”

However, this suppression disrupts the bees’ natural reproductive cycle. “If you look at how bees multiply, they swarm. That’s their natural way. If everybody’s running around not letting them swarm, what are we doing to the greater organism of the bee-ing?”

Conventional beekeepers multiply hives artificially through splits. “They’ll shake a couple of kilos of bees out of a hive into a funnel that goes into a box, get a queen they’ve reared themselves – not even a real queen – and stick it in the box and say, ‘Here you go, there’s a hive.’ That’s how commercial beekeepers multiply their colonies.”

In contrast, “Natural beekeeping encourages swarming. We let our bees swarm. We try to catch all our swarms because it’s our responsibility to catch swarms coming out of our hives by setting up swarm traps around our backyards and being available to catch those swarms.”

This approach benefits new beekeepers as well. “There’s nothing better than giving someone starting out a box of bees. They stick it in their hive and get going. It’s a beautiful thing, a life-changing experience.”

The Bees Mirror Our Energy

One of the most profound aspects of working with bees is their sensitivity to human emotions. “If I’m not in a good mood, maybe I’ve had an argument with my wife, I might think, ‘I’m gonna go hang out with my bees, they love me,’” Adrian shares. “So I’ll go down to the beehive and start fumbling around with that anger in me, and the bees really know it. They show it to me – they come back angry and say, ‘Don’t bring your shit here, mate. We’re not here to counsel you.’”

This mirroring teaches beekeepers important lessons about themselves. “They start buzzing at me or they sting me. They’re saying, ‘Go work your crap out and then come back to us. Come back with reverence. Come back wanting to learn.’”

Adrian has found this relationship to be a continuous source of wisdom. “They’re actually teaching us. Every time without fail, I go into a colony, into a beehive, and I’m learning something from them – something I’ve never seen before, or something I feel, or a message that comes in. There’s this constant learning from the bees.”

This perspective isn’t limited to natural beekeepers. “I’m not saying conventional and commercial beekeepers don’t know that. Of course, they do. But they’re paying their mortgage with honey, working hard, and the bees are working hard.”

The industrial scale of commercial beekeeping makes this relationship difficult to maintain. “How can you develop a relationship with a thousand hives? You can’t. With a hundred hives, it’s difficult. With ten hives, you can. You know each individual hive, and they know you. They get to know you really quick. They remember. Not each bee, but the organism remembers. Even if they swarm, the organism that stayed behind remembers. They’ll treat you the same – if you treat them badly, they’ll treat you badly and mirror everything you do.”

A Treatment-Free Approach to Varroa Mite

With varroa mite now present in Australia, Adrian takes a controversial but thoughtful position on treatment. “North America had varroa mite thirty or forty years ago. What happened there is they started this massive regime of poison, miticides in hives. They’re still using them today. The bees become so weak over time that they need antibiotics. So beekeepers are on this treadmill of miticides, antibiotics, miticides, antibiotics, and they’ve been doing it for thirty years.”

Yet the problem persists. “It doesn’t end. It hasn’t fixed the problem because the mites are still there. Some strains of mites have become resistant to miticides, so they have to use stronger chemicals, which knocks the bees about even harder.”

Adrian questions this approach. “Do we need to go on that treadmill? I don’t want to. We’re the last continent in the world that got mites. I was saying before the mites came, we need to develop a different technique.”

He looked to the treatment-free movement elsewhere. “I started asking my friends who are non-treatment beekeepers in America, England, and Europe, ‘What do you do? How do your bees survive?’ What I’ve learned, what many people have learned – not so many in Australia – is that treating your bees is the worst thing you can do.”

The problem with treatment is dependency. “It’s a quick fix, and the bees become dependent on miticides, whether that’s a chemical from a company or a so-called ‘natural treatment’ like thyme oil, oxalic acid, lactic acid, or formic acid.”

Adrian argues for a difficult but ultimately stronger approach. “If we help our bees survive, we’re going to continually help them survive. I know this goes against my thought of ‘we need to help them,’ but if we help them too much by treating, all we’re doing is perpetuating colonies that can’t help themselves.”

He points to what happened naturally in other parts of the world. “In America and Europe, colonies died in mass numbers – 90% loss rates, sometimes 100%. I’m talking about domestic colonies and wild colonies. But every now and then, a colony survived. It survived the varroa mite infestation, got the opportunity to swarm, and that swarm occupied another tree hollow somewhere in the forest. Then that colony got the opportunity to swarm, and those genetics were passed on because they learned to adapt and manage varroa themselves. It’s a learned technique.”

This natural selection process has created resistant populations worldwide. “There are wild bee colonies living without treatment on their own all over the world – South America, North America, England, Germany. We just have to be patient.”

Adrian acknowledges this approach isn’t for everyone. “The beekeeping industry isn’t patient. We’re going to lose a lot of pollination, surely. Maybe commercial beekeepers can treat if they want to, jumping on that treadmill. But do natural beekeepers and hobbyist beekeepers need to do that? I don’t think so.”

His vision is for a network of beekeepers building resistance naturally. “I hope there’s a bunch of us out there helping perpetuate these good genetics so bees can start to thrive without our intervention. At the end of our courses, I get everyone to join a WhatsApp group so we can communicate. Eventually, someone’s going to say, ‘I’ve got survivor colonies here, who needs a swarm?’ And we’ll share those swarms amongst ourselves, building up resistance quicker than what would happen naturally.”

Sourcing Ethical Honey

For those who want to support sustainable beekeeping through their purchasing choices, Adrian offers clear guidance on finding ethical honey. “The best thing you can eat is localized honey from your area. The plants are constantly talking to you as you walk barefooted through your backyard. They’re picking up what you need through a gland in the bottom of your foot, and they’re producing what you need.”

Local honey provides medicinal benefits specific to your environment. “There’s science about propolis and certain plants giving medicine through the propolis the bees produce to combat certain illnesses in certain areas.”

To find local beekeepers, Adrian recommends a specific resource. “Simon Mulvaney from Save the Bees Australia has a honey map on his website. Put in your postcode, and it’ll show you all your local beekeepers if they’ve registered. They’re usually small-scale beekeepers with 150-200 hives. They’re still treating their bees really well.”

When evaluating honey quality, processing methods matter significantly. “Make sure they don’t ultra-filter the honey, because then it has no pollen in it. And make sure they don’t heat-treat or heat-extract it. Cold-extracted honey is what you want. As soon as honey’s heated over about 36 degrees, it starts to lose its goodness. So make sure it’s cold-pressed – that’s when you’re going to get the benefits of honey.”

European Bees in the Australian Ecosystem

Adrian takes a thoughtful position on the role of European honeybees in Australia’s ecosystem, challenging the narrative that they’re harmful invasive species. “If I turn up with five hundred hives and stick them in the forest, it’s going to completely upset the balance that’s naturally formed in that part of the forest. But getting one or two hives in your backyard? I question that. It’s no different than another possum having more babies.”

He sees a problematic pattern in how we categorize species. “A lot of people say, ‘Yeah, but they’re natives.’ And I say, ‘We’re all natives to this planet.’ I’m really starting to despise that ‘non-native’ thing these days. It hurts my heart because when are people going to stop killing everything because it’s not from here or there? I’m talking about plants as well – we run around pulling out weeds and spraying and poisoning mother earth all the time.”

This perspective comes from indigenous wisdom as well. “My Aboriginal teacher, Uncle Max Harrison, would shake his head when he saw people spraying poison on our mother. So when’s that going to stop? Who’s benefiting from that? The chemical companies – and they’re the guys poisoning all our food.”

Adrian points out the hypocrisy in this perspective. “If we’re going to criticize introduced species, look in the mirror. If you’re not Aboriginal, look in the mirror and say, ‘Am I prepared to leave?’ Most people will say no. So stop the killings. Just enjoy it, man. Just look at it and watch it and love it. Put love into the place – that’s what we need.”

He notes the vital ecological role European honeybees play. “They’re doing a job that native bees can’t do – pollinating all our introduced plants. The apples you eat, the oranges, the zucchinis and pumpkins, the list goes on and on. That’s why bees were introduced here, not for honey. They were introduced to pollinate the plants Europeans brought into this country.”

Adrian asks for acceptance of these bees as part of our current ecosystem. “Some of those European honeybees have been here since the 1820s. Who says they don’t belong? Surely they do now. When are we going to accept them?”

Beginning Your Natural Beekeeping Journey

For those inspired to start their own natural beekeeping practice, Adrian recommends starting with education. Taking courses from experienced natural beekeepers provides essential hands-on knowledge that books alone can’t offer. Reading books like Jürgen Tautz’s “The Buzz About Bees” helps develop a deeper understanding of bee biology and colony behavior.

The Kenyan Top Bar hive offers a beginner-friendly starting point that respects natural bee behaviors while making management easier. Plans are readily available online, or kits can be purchased from natural beekeeping suppliers.

Connecting with the natural beekeeping community through online forums, social media groups, or local associations provides ongoing support and guidance. Visiting established natural beekeepers to observe hive inspections and honey harvesting gives invaluable practical insights.

Most importantly, begin slowly with just one hive to develop your skills and relationship with the bees. Taking time to deeply understand one colony’s behaviors and needs builds the foundation for successful natural beekeeping.

In the end, natural beekeeping is about more than honey production – it’s about developing a relationship with these remarkable creatures and learning from their ancient wisdom. As Adrian’s journey shows, when we approach bees with reverence and allow them to live according to their nature, they become not just honey producers but teachers.