Bees are a hot topic everywhere you look these days. Their plight and fortune is not unconnected with climate change and other environmental issues; from farming to deforestation. A lot of people are helping the bee population with their own contribution. From planting bee friendly flowers to taking up beekeeping.
For those in a position to keep bees, this article brings you a dozen of the best beekeeping books for beginners thinking of taking up beekeeping. Hopefully one of the books will help you get started in your beekeeping adventure.
Table of Contents
1. A Beginner’s Guide To Natural Beekeeping
Temi Odurinde’s A Beginner’s Guide to Natural Beekeeping, true to its name, is aimed at those who are considering starting keeping bees. The book covers interesting beekeeping topics that will keep novices fascinated and contains beekeeping tips that established beekeepers will find really useful. It is aimed at beekeepers who want to keep bees mainly to help bees and other pollinator insects rather than beekeepers who want to get into the hobby for honey they may harvest from their bees.
2.The Backyard Beekeeper, 4th Edition: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Keeping Bees in Your Yard and Garden
This book is also for those who are just dipping their toes into the world of beekeeping. Written by an experienced beekeeper, Kim Flottum, who well understands the needs of a beekeeper. Kim does justice to beekeeping details that newbies will find easy to digest. Contained in this beginner’s beekeeping book are effective tips and interesting narratives that help make reading fun.
3. Homegrown Honey Bees: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Beekeeping Your First
This book is another element that should be in a beginner beekeeper’s tool kit. The author, Alethea Morrisson, gives in-depth discussion of colony hierarchy, allergies, bee behavior, and discusses some other interesting topics which experts alike will find informative and most likely recommend to a other beekeeper. It does not end there, the book is also filled with explicit texts and beautiful pictures that will certainly whet your appetite for beekeeping.
4. Beekeeping for Beginners: How To Raise Your First Bee Colonies
Amber Bradshaw discusses the beekeeping essentials including the things you need to know to start your first colony, the guides on how to start your colony off right that feature the best practices and natural approaches. Also contained in the book are glossary and beekeeping terms that are clearly defined for easy comprehension.
5. Natural Beekeeping with the Warre Hive
Natural beekeeping with Warre Hive is one of the best natural beekeeping books for beginners that want to build their beekeeping skills and knowledge quickly. The book contains a section that covers in great detail the material, construction, and components of the Warré hive. Other sections cover such topics as getting, hiving, feeding your bee; enlarging, monitoring your hive etc. You will also learn in greater detail everything you need to know on how to build the Warre Hive from scratch and if you don’t want to build your own, there is a resource section in the back of the book including someone who makes them.
6. Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture
Ross Conrad’s natural beekeeping book brings together the methods and strategies breeding for naturally resistant bees; controlling mites; eliminating foulbrood diseases and many others. The best strategies for keeping honey bees healthy are laid out in simple details and a chapter on marketing provides valuable advice for those that intend to sell a wide range of hive products. If you are looking to develop accurate knowledge of pest-management or want to go into the bee products business, Ross Conrad’s Natural Beekeeping is the book for you.
7. The Practical Beekeeper: Beekeeping Naturally
In Michael Bush’s The Practical Beekeeper: Beekeeping Naturally, readers are introduced to the fundamentals of beekeeping, the players, namely the queen,the workers,drone, and the beekeeper. What readers will also learn in this book is how they can keep bees in a simple practical system without worrying about pests and diseases with little intervention by the beekeeper. The book essentially sets out to help beekeepers reduce their workload among other things. The Practical Beekeeper contains 3 volumes; the beginners, intermediate and advanced. The author is an active beekeeping website’s owner and this book is a collection of refined posts on his website.
8. The Hive and the Honey Bee Revisited: An Annotated Update of Langstroth’s Classic
Roger Hoopingarner’s The Hive and the Honey Bee Revisited contains inspiring, practical and clearly laid out techniques for beekeeping at all levels. It covers sections that go over the tools for beekeeping, obtaining, sitting, feeding and hiving your bees, harvesting and extracting honey with simple tools, monitoring the hive etc.
9. The Beekeeper’s Bible
The Beekeeper’s Bible contains a practical guide to the fundamentals of beekeeping. The sections in the book cover the history of beekeeping all the way to hive management and it also features a number of recipes for products with bee-based ingredients. This is a book for all levels of beekeeping.
10. Beekeeping for Dummies
Is there anyone who hasn’t heard of the famous and staggeringly extensive “for dummies” series? The over 2500 titles still on the market speaks to the overwhelming popularity of this media franchise. A winsome aspect of this book is that it stresses the importance of both tradition and individuality within beekeeping.
11. Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees
Thor Hanson’s Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees will give you something new and insightful about keeping bees regardless of how long or short your journey in beekeeping has been. Readers are introduced to the importance of these honey-making insects to humanity. The book also touches on the decline in the bee population, discusses beekeeping tips that beginners and experts will find helpful in their beekeeping adventures.
12. The Beekeeper’s Problem Solver: 100 Common Problems Explored and Explained
By James E. Tew
James E. Tew wrote this incredibly useful beekeeping book. The book focuses on great numbers of beekeeping problems , which addresses one of the more fraught corners of beekeeping. The book discusses general principles of beekeeping and covers topics on beekeeping technology.
In this book, readers will learn the solution to beekeeping problems– including those problems that you would otherwise not notice.This and many others make this book a must-have for a beginner beekeeper .
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