Keeping Bees and Making Honey: 2nd Edition

By Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum

Book Overview

Keeping Bees and Making Honey is a stunning, comprehensive and attractive lifestyle guide to beekeeping packed with images, information, practical advice, useful resources and recipes. Whether you have a tiny balcony or acres of land; live in the middle of a city or in the countryside surrounded by flowers, you can keep bees. Keeping Bees and Making Honey caters for every situation, and covers everything you will need to consider before you set up your colony - including when and how to tell the neighbours

'Understanding your bees' introduces you to the history of bees and humans, the anatomy of a honey bee, the variety of species that you are likely to encounter, the caste system within a colony of queen, worker and drone, and the birth and life cycle of bees. 'What to consider' suggests factors to consider before keeping bees, from the space where you will house your hives to children and pets. Learn about the variety of hives available and how they work, as well all the important things that you will need including protective clothing, a smoker and hive tool, as well as honey-harvesting equipment. There are a variety of sources for purchasing your bees and 'Where and when to get your bees' will give you all the advice you need covering the nucleus, packaged bees, full colonies and tips on marking the queen. There are detailed sections on pollen and supers.

'Gardening for bees' will help you consider the best flowers to supply nectar and pollen to your bees whilst ensuring your garden looks great It is probably the prospect of home-grown honey that entices most people to keep bees. 'All about honey' will show you how bees make honey, and how to harvest, jar and sell your honey. There is a whole chapter devoted to other bee products, from uses of beeswax; candles and cosmetics, to delicious recipes made with honey. Finally, 'Health and care' will ensure that your apiary stays clean and tidy, and your colony is pest free, strong and vigorous.

This updated and revised edition of Keeping Bees and Making Honey includes new material on bees as a superorganism, keeping bees in urban locations such as schools and at work, caring for bees during the winter, your second year as a bee keeper and more on bee health, varroa and colony collapse disorder. Environmentally there has never been a more important time to start beekeeping, nor is there a better antidote to the stresses of everyday life. Keeping Bees and Making Honey is the ideal companion for you if you are planning to start keeping bees in order to contribute to their conservation and to enjoy the considerable benefits of this fascinating hobby.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1446303551
• ISBN13: 9781446303559
• Release Date: June 2013
• Publisher: David & Charles
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.5" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Love It, Love Bees

Love this book, has great info for a novice beekeeper. Can't wait to get started this coming winter so I can have bees next spring and will be eating honey by next summer.

Great Beginners Guide

Althought this text is not Dadant approved/published, it is a very comprehensive and informative guide for beginning honey beekeeping that gives the new apiarist all they need to know to get started and through their 2nd season.

Neat introductory book

When I retire in a few years I wanted to find a hobby which would be ecologically beneficial and potentially financially rewarding. I thought about beekeeping and sought out an introductory book. This one has some valuable lessons, good information, and a realistic slant on what commitment you need as a beekeeper.

Best photography of any bee book I've seen so far.

This is a beautifully produced book with some really excellent photography; it should be mandatory to furnish dentist's waiting rooms with at least one copy (not only would it successfully distract the patients, but we'd also end up with more beekeepers in the world... and all of them with good teeth). The text is informative and straightforward (although I did find the chapter sequencing a little puzzling and personally would have preferred to see the gardening, honey and products chapters shuffled to the back and all of the essential beekeeping information consolidated). I found the chapter on gardening for bees to be especially interesting and relevant though, along with the plant-to-honey-type cross-reference table, and have been diligently planting seeds to provide my hives with some early spring blooms based on that content. The beekeeping information is as up to date as you'd expect for a 2008 book with, for instance, a reference to dusting the bees with icing sugar as a method for controlling mite infestation. Although not perhaps as comprehensive as Sammataro and Avitabile's "The Beekeepers Handbook", the photography and sections on an introduction to beekeeping certainly compensate. U.K. readers especially will appreciate the references and use throughout the book of the familiar WBC, double-walled hive. This is an engaging book on several levels. The first and most obvious is as a coffee-table book which will interest young and old alike. Secondly, it's a great source of well illustrated information for the novice, or yet to be, beekeeper. For the more experienced, it's one of those books which is nice to have to hand to show to friends and neighbours (or anyone taking an interest in your bees). It has content which will also appeal to the gardener and to the city dweller, as well as to anyone interested in ecology and the environment. An excellent buy.

Great Beginning Book

Great book for beginning beekeepers! Loads of info on bees,starting out with bees, and bee products. Answers to questions that I hadn't even thought to ask!