At a time when food and health systems are increasingly disconnected, we choose to work small, local, and hands-on. Everything we do begins with the honey bee — and extends to healing, education and nourishment for people and the planet.
Keeping bees, Healing land, and strengthening people
For 25 years, we’ve raised resilient bees at commercial scale using organic and biodynamic management — not so much a philosophy, as a practice, an attitude, a loyalty, and a passion. Through honey-fed bees, natural nest design, and zero synthetic miticides, we produce potent hive medicines. We teach families to do the same, because food and medicine sovereignty begins in the apiary.
partners in land stewardship, regenerative apiculture, and family
For more than 25 years, we’ve worked honey bees together — building Diggin’ Livin’ as a working, family-scale apiary rooted in organic and biodynamic practice. That work sharpened into medicinal beekeeping: producing potent hive medicines from strong colonies and teaching others how to reclaim food and medicine sovereignty. Our work is inspired by our Creator and grounded in a responsibility to pass on a healthy and beautiful landscape to the next generations.
Choose Your Path
Learn
Study Natural Beekeeping through our Level 1 Beginner & Intermediate and Level 2 Advanced courses. Eric also offers one-on-one Beekeeping Consultations — in person or via Zoom. Study Apitherapy and become certified through Joy and Eric’s in-depth, comprehensive Apitherapy Certification course.
Diggin’ Livin’ produces honey, oxymels, electuaries, propolis tinctures, jun, and beeswax goods — made with utmost care and integrity. We offer our own resilient honey bee stock via nucleus colonies and live bees for BVT.
We are proud to be food producers and to offer hive medicines from our own colonies here in Southern Oregon. These are real products of the hive — raised, tended, and harvested by our family. We believe strong, well-made hive medicines contribute to healthier people and a healthier planet. From raw honey and propolis to oxymels, beeswax goods, nucleus colonies, and live bees for BVT, every offering begins with strong colonies, careful stewardship, and a real relationship to the land.
Raw Honey
Organically managed and biodynamically inspired, our honey is raw, unheated, and unfiltered — a living food crafted through medicinal beekeeping practices that honor purity inside and outside the hive.
Beekeeping and apitherapy are living traditions — best learned through observation, mentorship, and community. Through courses, consultations, and gatherings, we share the practices that have shaped our work with bees, medicine, and land stewardship for decades.
Apitherapy Certification
An in-depth professional training rooted in Joy’s 16 years of clinical practice, medicinal beekeeping, and hands-on experience working with bee venom therapy and hive medicines. Certified through the American Association of Natural Wellness Coaches (AANWC), this comprehensive program includes over 200 hours of lectures, guided learning, and knowledge checks completed over 18 weeks. The certification explores hive medicines, bee venom therapy, the apiarian mindset, test sting procedures, progression protocols, safety considerations, contraindications, and clinical integration.
enrollment open (next cohort is March 1)
Natural Beekeeping
Level 1: Foundations
Natural Beekeeping Level 1 expands on our book, Raising Resilient Bees, through comprehensive video lessons, guided assignments, quizzes, and practical instruction rooted in decades of hands-on experience. This is not your average beekeeping course built around buying products, plastic equipment, and constant inputs. We teach beekeeping through observation, resilience, natural queen dynamics, seasonal rhythms, and working with the biology of the hive. Topics include hive setup, swarm behavior, ethical honey harvesting, feeding philosophy, overwintering, and building strong colonies with locally adapted genetics.
sign-ups now available (first cohort starts Jan 1)
Natural Beekeeping
Level 2: Advanced
Level 2 is designed for beekeepers managing six or more hives who are preparing to expand responsibly and deepen their understanding of the hive. This is not a course about scaling through packages, replacement queens, and endless inputs. We teach natural queen rearing, genetic tracking and selection, apiary development, and long-term resilience rooted in organic and medicinal beekeeping practices. Students learn how to build strong breeding lines, work with locally adapted genetics, increase colonies naturally, and grow an apiary with observation, skill, and stewardship at the center. Strong apiaries are built, not bought.
in person or via zoom
Beekeeping Consultations
With Eric
Eric provides personalized consultations for beekeepers at any stage, available in person or via Zoom. Drawing from over 25 years of commercial-scale experience, he offers practical, field-tested guidance on colony health, natural management, queen selection, apiary growth, and resilience without chemical dependence.
Schedule an appointment
Apitherapy Appointments
With Joy
Joy provides one-on-one apitherapy appointments in her Ashland office and through virtual consultations. Drawing on 16 years of practice, she works with clients using bee venom therapy and hive medicine integration, emphasizing patient-led healing, careful progression, and personalized care.
Bring our expertise to your organization through speaking, workshops, and collaborative consultation. We share our experience with universities, regenerative farms, health practitioners, and community networks — helping others weave honey-bee ecology and apitherapy into education, health, and land care.
“Beekeepers and the bee-curious alike will revel in this fresh offering from long-time honey bee stewards Eric and Joy McEwen. In a conversational and approachable fashion, this husband-and-wife team gracefully offers up solutions to some of the most difficult contemporary beekeeping problems. Opening this book is opening a window into a resilient and regenerative beekeeping operation. Your bees will thank you for it.”
— Sarah Red-Laird Founder & Executive Program Director, Bee Girl Organization; past president, Western Apicultural Society
“Joy and Eric McEwen give a vivid, practical, evidence-based demonstration of how a commercial beekeeping enterprise of over 600 hives can work in a way that is more ecologically sustainable and bee-friendly, while remaining profitable enough to support a family and employees. Biodynamic and organic beekeepers will applaud the authors’ use of ‘Natural Nest’ hives with single-sized boxes and vertically uninterrupted brood nests, populated with locally adapted bees and naturally reared queens.”
— David Heaf Author of The Bee-Friendly Beekeeper
“The McEwens look at every aspect of a honey bee’s life in this book — pest and disease issues, living space, the genetics of resistance and tolerance, qualities of successful queens, optimal feeding, and seasonal management that prioritizes the bee above the beekeeper. Resilience means being adaptable — finding new and better solutions to old problems. Adaptability is the best quality a honey bee, and a beekeeper, can have.”
— Kim Flottum Author of The Backyard Beekeeper; host, Beekeeping Today Podcast
In Raising Resilient Bees, Eric and Joy not only provide us with a bee-centric approach to beekeeping but also a human-centric one. As farmers, our desire to practice a method of agriculture that seeks to regenerate our natural systems and resources rather than exploit them requires us to consider how to bring our whole human selves to the task. Raising Resilient Bees is not just a how-to manual on holistic beekeeping for hobbyists and professionals alike, but a manifesto on how we, as humans, can practice respect, humility, and love, in service to the Earth and each other.
— Beth Hoinacki Farmer, Goodfoot Farm; president of Demeter Advisory Board, Biodynamic Demeter Alliance
Real Impact
“Beekeepers and the bee-curious alike will revel in this fresh offering from long-time honey bee stewards Eric and Joy McEwen. In a conversational and approachable fashion, this husband-and-wife team gracefully offers up solutions to some of the most difficult contemporary beekeeping problems. Opening this book is opening a window into a resilient and regenerative beekeeping operation. Your bees will thank you for it.”
— Sarah Red-Laird Founder & Executive Program Director, Bee Girl Organization; past president, Western Apicultural Society
“Joy and Eric McEwen give a vivid, practical, evidence-based demonstration of how a commercial beekeeping enterprise of over 600 hives can work in a way that is more ecologically sustainable and bee-friendly, while remaining profitable enough to support a family and employees. Biodynamic and organic beekeepers will applaud the authors’ use of ‘Natural Nest’ hives with single-sized boxes and vertically uninterrupted brood nests, populated with locally adapted bees and naturally reared queens.”
— David Heaf Author of The Bee-Friendly Beekeeper
“The McEwens look at every aspect of a honey bee’s life in this book — pest and disease issues, living space, the genetics of resistance and tolerance, qualities of successful queens, optimal feeding, and seasonal management that prioritizes the bee above the beekeeper. Resilience means being adaptable — finding new and better solutions to old problems. Adaptability is the best quality a honey bee, and a beekeeper, can have.”
— Kim Flottum Author of The Backyard Beekeeper; host, Beekeeping Today Podcast
In Raising Resilient Bees, Eric and Joy not only provide us with a bee-centric approach to beekeeping but also a human-centric one. As farmers, our desire to practice a method of agriculture that seeks to regenerate our natural systems and resources rather than exploit them requires us to consider how to bring our whole human selves to the task. Raising Resilient Bees is not just a how-to manual on holistic beekeeping for hobbyists and professionals alike, but a manifesto on how we, as humans, can practice respect, humility, and love, in service to the Earth and each other.
— Beth Hoinacki Farmer, Goodfoot Farm; president of Demeter Advisory Board, Biodynamic Demeter Alliance
“Much akin to the wondrous distillation that honey bees perform while alchemizing nectar from flowers into concentrated pearls of sweet, nutritious, and healing honey, Joy and Eric have distilled decades of earnest, caring, and arduous work tending their apiaries into pearls of valuable wisdom.”
— Don Tipping Farmer & Seedsman, Siskiyou Seeds
“A Jacqueline Freeman journey through some super solid information. Eric and Joy McEwen cover all the bee basics and the challenges one should expect when getting started. They offer a very genuine depiction, through real-life experiences, of what it takes to manage bees sustainably — a testament to regenerative beekeeping by way of responsible practices, understanding of place, and most of all, the appreciation of deep bee ecology.”
— Rob Keller Napa Valley Bee Co.
Join The Hive!
Join our community for reflections on natural beekeeping, apitherapy, and regenerative living.
“The hive is a teacher. The land is a mirror. And sovereignty begins at the scale of the family.”
