

What is PermApiculture?

PermApiculture (Permanent + Apiculture) is a system of beekeeping designed to imitate the bees’ habitat in nature as closely as possible by providing bees with their three greatest needs:

Lots of Space

Lots of Honey

Lots of Peace

Oscar Perone, a master beekeeper from Argentina and creator of PermApiculture, believes that when bees have these three things, they are able to develop larger stronger hives that are capable of caring for themselves without chemicals, expensive equipment, or beekeeper’s interventions.

In order to create a bee-friendly space that provided these three needs, Perone designed his own hive, a top-vertical hive now known as the Perone hive. Perone hives are divided into two parts: the bees’ part, where the bees keep their brood and honey reserves, and the beekeeper’s part. Once occupied by bees, the beekeeper should only enter the beekeeper’s part, for the purpose of harvesting honey. The beekeeper never enters the bees’ part.

There are currently thousands of Perone hives throughout Mexico, Central, and South America. The Perone hive and PermApiculture system of beekeeping has shown great promise in reversing the trend of Colony Collapse Disorder. When built correctly, its survival rates are in the 90 percentile in tropical and other moderate climates.

This year several Perone hives were set up in southern Chile, which has wetter colder winters than most of the regions where Perone hives have already been established. (Think of the winters in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, or London, U.K. That’s what the winters are like in southern Chile.)

For many climates (deserts, high altitudes, places with FRIGID winters, etc.), experimentation in Perone hives and PermApiculture is young, just starting, or has yet to begin. While the authors of this page do not advocate that one technique fits all climates, we do believe that the ideals of PermApiculture can be applied to conditions all over the world. We have created this website as a space to provide information and experiences regarding PermApiculture and Perone hives so that people can successfully adapt Perone’s techniques to their own ecosystems.

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