A beginner’s guide to natural beekeeping book cover
Do you find the idea of keeping bees fascinating and want to take it up as a hobby? Are you already keeping bees in your backyard and want to learn how to keep it the natural way? Then this book is for you. Natural beekeeping is tremendous fun, a rewarding pastime and it has been argued to positively impact our health and wellbeing.
I have always loved to keep bees and it has long been a hobby I would like to take up at some point in my life. As a lifelong learner, I love to read books and read about anything that interests me. Beekeeping is one of my favourite subjects to discuss given the slightest opportunity. Naturally, I have found myself reading some beekeeping books. I recently read a book recommended by a friend, A Beginner’s Guide To Natural Beekeeping by Temi Odurinde, a natural beekeeper in United Kingdom.
For someone who is about to venture big time into beekeeping, A Beginner’s Guide To Natural Beekeeping has in no small measure intensified my passion for this awesome pastime not just for the fun inherent in having these honey-making creatures flourishing in your own apiary but also for their commercial and ecological benefits as expounded in the book.
True to its name, A Beginner’s Guide To Natural Beekeeping is packed with careful details geared towards a beginner with some topics I think an established natural beekeeper alike might find interesting such as “Ecology and Challenges facing the bee” and “Beekeeping without keeping bees”.
A Beginner’s Guide To Natural Beekeeping contains 12 core chapters namely:
- Why Take Up Natural Beekeeping?
- Ecology and Challenges Facing the Bee
- First Steps and Tools
- Hives: Choosing and Sitting
- Structure of Life in a Bee Colony
- Acquiring Your First Swarm of Bees
- Looking After Your Bees
- Harvesting the Nectar of the Gods
- Plants that Makes Your Bees Feel at Home
- Beekeeping Without Keeping Bees
- Natural Bee Product and Remedy
- A Sweet Farewell
You Can Have Your Own Beehive
Though in the wild, bees build their own hive, there are also other sheltered places for bees and you as a one can keep your own bees. The tools and all other things you need to do this are discussed under “First Steps and Tools” and “Hives: Choosing and Sitting” whose chapters the author of the book strategically wrote to follow one another.
Bees and Humanity
Chapter 1, Why Take Up Natural Beekeeping?, talks at length about why you should consider keeping bees and their importance to humanity. It also gives some eye-catching facts about the significance of these honey-making insects to the world economy.
Allergic To Bee Sting But Keeping Bees
Chapter 6, Acquiring Your First Swarm of Bees, covers topics that deal with how bees are acquired; acquiring beekeeping equipment, how one can acquire a swarm of bees for free and a host of other methods for acquiring your first swarm of bees. For those that are allergic to bee sting, the author prescribes the right beekeeping wears and due diligence on the part of the beekeeper in the treatment of the bees in order to avoid being stung. This chapter expands on the dos and don’ts for those who are allergic to bee sting, extra precautions to be taken and some certain items that should be included in their beekeeping toolbox.
Ecology and Natural Beekeeping: A Perfect Relationship
A Beginner’s Guide To Natural Beekeeping also speaks about different types of beekeepers. It draws some similarities as well as goes over the difference between natural and conventional beekeepers. Their approach to beekeeping is given to be their major difference. Though being a natural beekeeper, the author recommends natural beekeeping, the reader is made to understand that both the natural and conventional beekeepers love bees and joining either of the two sides will help the bees. However, being a natural will go a long way to ultimately address the ecological issues of a decline in the bee population. This positive relationship between natural beekeeping and curbing the decline in bee populations is discussed extensively across various chapters in the book. Of course, one of those chapters is chapter 1, “Why Take Up Natural Beekeeping?” and chapter 2, “Ecology and Challenges Facing the Bee”.
Not Time Consuming But Requires Your Care
“Looking After Your Bees” ,which occupies chapter 7 of A Beginner’s Guide To Natural Beekeeping, goes over the steps of how to look after your bees after you must have acquired some and have them housed in a beehive. In this chapter, we are made to understand that looking after the bees is not much of a work for a beekeeper as the bees can well look after themselves. A beekeeper is however advised to look out for the wasps as they tend to attack the bees in their hive.
The readers are also introduced to various pests, other than wasps, and diseases that can endanger the lives of the bees. While preventive measures to be taken by the beekeeper as well as curative treatments to be given to the bees if they are attacked are explained in this chapter.
We are also made to understand that bees are affected by unfavourable weather and environmental conditions just like humans. After reading this chapter, a beekeeper would certainly want to ensure that his bees are kept in appropriately insulated hives and the beekeepers must have been equipped with the knowledge of ideal temperature range for a brooding nest.
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The author enjoins the beekeeper to look for a beekeeping association to join. Being a member of one, he gives his candid opinion and thoughts about the importance of joining a local association and the benefits of becoming a member of a local chapter with respect to the inherent obligations of national association membership, the national membership status you automatically assume after becoming a member of the local association.
All these and more are what make Temi Odurinde’s A Beginner’s Guide To Natural Beekeeping one of the best books for beginners ever recommended to me and what I will likewise recommend to someone who desires to learn about beekeeping.
Have fun keeping bees!
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