David Heaf was born in 1947 in Liverpool, grew up in Sheffield and obtained his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in biochemistry at the University College of North Wales, Bangor. After a career in research biochemistry he settled in north-west Wales where he works as a translator and, with his wife Pat, manages a large vegetable garden. He started beekeeping in 2003 with National hives. In 2006 he was introduced to the Warré hive, and populated six of them in 2007. He now winters about 10 Warrés and a few frame hives. In 2010, Northern Bee Books published his book on apicentric beekeeping entitled The Bee-friendly Beekeeper (reprinted 2012), and they invited him to write a manual on Natural Beekeeping with the Warré Hive, which was published 2013.