Do you want to be a beekeeper and need help on how to start? Charlotte Ekker Wiggins has written the definitive guide to beginning beekeeping. This diary will guide you on how to start, troubleshoot and successfully develop basic beekeeping skills and practices.The information in this easy to use guide, with handy check lists and tips, will answer your beginning beekeeping questions including: How to naturally feed your honey bees.Best beekeeping equipment. Where to set up your hives. How to get honey bees.How to manage pests and diseases.Plus much more! This diary continues to be used in Charlotte's beekeeping classes. It is approved for use with Great Plains Master Beekeeping Program classes.

The beginner as well as the experienced professional will garner a hive full of information from Applied Beekeeping in the United States. Honeybee information has been compiled and published in book form in hopes that beekeepers in the United States and worldwide will benefit. There are many topics in this book not contained in more theoretical books and through 342 pages, supplemented by 246 full-color photographs, both the novice and experienced beekeeper will take away new knowledge. This book is a collection of articles published in Bee Culture, Beekeeping: The First Three Years, and American Bee Journal over the last five to eight years plus some unpublished information and articles. The information covers a broad range of beekeeping topics from basic beekeeping (smokers, moving hives, pulling honey, going through a colony, laying workers, the bee-year, splitting, extracting your honey crop, when is a colony worth saving, swarming, drawing out comb, feeders, installing a package of bees, safety in the beeyard, frames and foundation, beeswax candles, bottom boards, walk-away splits, feeding, rotating old comb, determining how many colonies to have at each location), equipment (assembling frames and foundation, assembling equipment), planning (establishing out-yards, sales and marketing, pollination, mentoring, starting a bee club) and finance (when and how much equipment should you purchase), and much more. David MacFawn has over 50 years' experience working with honey bees, mainly in the southeastern United States.

A million pounds of honey. Produced by a billion bees! This memoir reconstructs the life of a young man from Pennsylvania as he drops into the bald prairie badlands of southern Saskatchewan. He buys a honey ranch and keeps the bees that make the honey. But he also spends winters in Florida swamps, nurse-maid to ten thousand dainty queen bees. From the dusty Canadian prairie to the thick palmetto swamps of the American south, the reader meets with simple folks who shape the protagonist's character - including a Cree rancher with three sons playing NHL hockey, a Hutterite preacher who yearns to roam the globe, a reclusive bee-eating homesteader, and a grey-headed widow who grows grapefruit, plays a nasty game of scrabble, and lives with four vicious dogs. Encompassing a ten-year period, this true story evolves from the earnest inexperience of the young man as he learns an art and builds a business. Carefully researched natural biology runs counterpoint to human social activities. Bee craft serves as the setting for expositions that contrast American and Canadian lifestyles, while exemplifying the harsh reality of a man working with and against the physical environment.

“As a world authority on insect anatomy, Snodgrass has given us this book a brilliant account of the anatomy of the honey bee and how it relates to the way that bees develop and how and why they function as they do in their interesting communal life. This book should be in the library of every student of the honey bee and bee behaviour—beekeepers as well as scientists. The book is delightfully written and is enjoyable reading.”—American Bee Journal “This is not just a technical reference book on honey bee anatomy. It is far more, it is essentially a treatise on entomology, using one species as an example, and including a discussion of the fundamentals of embryology, development, and metamorphosis as well as anatomy. The subject of each chapter is approached from the broadest evolutionary point of view, and its horizon includes all the arthropods and beyond, so that the bee really typifies animal life in general. Finally, the language of the book is such that it can be read straight through with pleasure....It is a delight to follow the author through this complete examination of one insect: how it develops, how it grows, and how it operates.”—Entomological News

Top-Bar Beekeeping is an offering designed to encourage beekeepers around the world to keep bees naturally by providing beekeeping basics, hive management and the utilization of top-bar hives. In recent years, beekeepers have had to face tremendous challenges, from pests, such as varroa and tracheal mites, to the mysterious but even more devastating phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Yet in backyards and on rooftops all over the world, bees are being raised successfully, even without antibiotics, miticides, or other chemical inputs. More and more organically-minded beekeepers are now using top-bar hives, in which the shape of the interior resembles a hollow log. Long lasting and completely biodegradable, a top-bar hive made of untreated wood allows bees to build comb naturally rather than simply filling prefabricated foundation frames in a typical box hive with added supers. Top-bar hives yield slightly less honey but produce more beeswax than a typical Langstroth box hive. Regular hive inspection and the removal of old combs helps to keep bees healthier and naturally disease-free. Top-Bar Beekeeping provides complete information on hive management and other aspects of using these innovative hives. All home and hobbyist beekeepers who have the time and interest in keeping bees intensively should consider the natural, low-stress methods outlined in this book. It will also appeal to home orchardists, gardeners, and permaculture practitioners who look to bees for pollination as well as honey or beeswax.