 Hello, my name is Dr. Lesha Rushkin and we are in the Ozark mountains of southern Missouri. I am a natural beekeeper. I keep bees that I obtain here from the wilderness in the Ozark mountains and put them in beautifully decorated hives like this one. And a few years ago I had a SAIR grant to create a collection of local bee strains that we have here in the Ozarks. Amazingly, most beekeepers in the United States use just a very small selection of honeybees. They are called Italian bees that are native to the subtropical climate in Europe. And these bees are being propagated all over the country even with climates that have very cold winters like what we may have here in the Ozarks in southern Missouri. What I do instead, I set up small boxes called bait hives in the trees in the spring. And just as birds move into broth houses, honeybees when they swarm, they are looking for a new place to live and they move into these bait hives. After that, I collect them from trees and I put them into bigger hives so they can keep expanding and produce honey for me as the beekeeper. It's very important to be working with local bees rather than buying bees that were raised in a different state far the south because, again, local bees would have better winter hardiness. So starting is very easy. You set up a box and the bees just come to the box on their own. And I keep repeating that keeping bees can be simpler than growing tomatoes. With vegetable growing, you need to plant the seed and take care of it and water and fertilize. And they're protected from pests and from wildlife. With the bees, all you need to do is to start with, we need the poo called the right sort of bees. In this case, the wilderness bees adapted to the local conditions and give them a good home. I have a website called horizontal hive dot com that has a free swarm catching guide. So you can read how easy it is to catch your own local swarms. And then free plans for building boxes like this one where you just transfer the frames and the bees will keep expanding. And with the horizontal hive design, there is no heavy lifting involved. It's not like the conventional hive that you see more conventionally where you have a stack of boxes. Each of each can be 50 pounds or more. So with this natural beekeeping approach that I practice, there is much less stress on the bees because I don't have to open this box often. I work only with the local strains of bees so they stay healthier and stronger without chemicals or antibiotics. I never feed them sugar. I allow them to have the same kind of natural cycle as they would have living in a beet tree in the woods. And I have a book called keeping bees with a smile. And I can tell that for me it is as much about the smile as about the livelihood or the honey and wax and other wonderful products that bees can produce. So I can tell you that I can make more from one acre of wilderness even in terms of economic return by working with local bees and low maintenance beehives that you can build yourself from some scrap lumber. I can get more economic value from an acre of wilderness land than I could if I were running cattle or growing crops here on the very dry and rocky soils of the southern Ozarks. If you would like to learn more about the natural beekeeping approach and the importance of working with the local honey bees I invite you to explore the information on the SAIR grant project that I made and also look up my website horizontal hive.com that has much more free information on natural beekeeping. If you get encouraged to get started I very much would like to hear from you experiences and I wish you all the best keeping bees with a smile.