Few people combine backgrounds in computational mathematics, farming, publishing, and beekeeping quite like Ivan. Father of a large family and a graduate of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics at Lomonosov Moscow State University, he has devoted the past decade to the study of honey bees, their biology, and the promotion of apiology throughout Russia. Ivan is the founder of the Association for Natural Beekeeping in Russia and a passionate science communicator, delivering lectures on bees to audiences ranging from university students to business leaders. Through the Association, he and his colleagues are leading initiatives to conserve Russia's dark forest bee populations and to study free-living honey bee colonies in the forests of central Russia. He has also introduced Russian readers to the work of Thomas Seeley through his translations of several of Seeley's books, with additional publishing projects currently underway. Please join us for a conversation that reaches across borders into the wild and free-living honey bees of the Russian forest.