The Gentle Way to Keep Bees
Handcrafted hives designed for bee welfare and ease of handling. We believe in a calm, respectful approach to beekeeping that honor the natural rhythms of the hive.
Explore our hives
From beginner-standerd Lanstroth frame options to our favorite Laynes hives, all made for the modern beekeeper.
Prioritizing Bee Health
Our horizontal beehives are designed with the beekeeper in mind. By minimizing stress and providing a natural, low-profile environment, slats under the lid allow you to open just a small portion of the hive at a time. This architectural approach to beekeeping allows for easy inspection and maintenance, helping you maintain a healthy colony with minimal disruption. AKA less angry bees!!!
Why use Horizontal Beehives?
Our horizontal hives provide superior insulation for your bees. This greatly increases hive efficiency in the summer and survival rate in the winter.
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Horizontal hives do not require supers. This means much less disturbance to your bees during inspection and much less work for the beekeeper. No more stacking and unstacking heavy supers.
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Multiple entrances mean when the hive starts to get congested near the entrance, you can simply close that entrance and open the next one over, encouraging your bees to use fresh, untapped space with almost no effort on your part.
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Horizontal Layens hives have much deeper frames than the standard Langstroth frames. This is superior for cold climates. If you struggle to get your bees through the winter like so many beekeepers do, the well-insulated Horizontal Layens hive could change beekeeping for you. The reason why is that bees cluster on the comb, eating honey to stay warm through the winter. The bees move up the comb as they consume the honey, but with shallow Langstroth frames, bees often get to the top of the frame and don’t realize that there is another frame of honey above them, and they starve.
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 Horizontal hives, especially Layens hives, much more closely resemble the bees' natural habitat of a bee tree.
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Story behind  Nature's Honey
I became passionate about beekeeping as a youth and read every beekeeping book I could get my hands on. I quickly became very interested in keeping bees in horizontal hives, so I started building horizontal Langstroth hives. That way I could re-hive my bees without starting from scratch. I found that these hives were much easier to use. I could simply move a divider board or open a new entrance to give my bees space to grow — much less work than pulling the hive apart to add supers. And my bees seemed happier! I have been keeping bees in horizontal hives ever since. Now I am sharing this passion with other beekeepers who want an easier, more practical, and natural way to keep bees.