A Practical Manual of Beekeeping: How to Keep Bees and Develop Your Full Potential as an Apiarist

by Cramp, David

• ISBN13: 9781905862238
• ISBN10: 1905862237
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-15
• Publisher: How to Books Ltd

Summary

Beekeeping can provide anyone with an interesting and useful hobby or a lucrative and rewarding business. It is recognised as a vital agricultural industry and can therefore also offer you a globe trotting career. The whole subject is, however, often shrouded in mystery and loaded with jargon, leaving many people unaware of its true potential or how to start

Author Biography

David Cramp started beekeeping as a hobby in 1991 before spending a year at the Bee Research Unit at Cardiff University. He started a beekeeping company in Spain, producing organic honey, and after 12 years moved with his wife and two daughters to New Zealand to manage a 4000 hive operation, specialising in pollination and manuka honey. David writes for the beekeeping press in the UK, the USA and Spain and is the author of the Beekeeper's Field Guide. He edits the online beekeeping magazine Apis UK and is now starting his own honey bee queen rearing business

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. ix
List of photographs	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
Acknowledgements	p. xv
Honey-bees and human beings	p. 1
Understanding the relationship between bees and pollination	p. 1
Profiting from a gold mine	p. 2
Coping with bee stings	p. 4
Making a hobby of beekeeping	p. 4
Bees and learning	p. 5
Master chemists	p. 5
Researching honey-bees	p. 6
Becoming a beekeeper	p. 6
The world is your oyster	p. 8
Understanding the honey-bee colony	p. 9
Considering the colony as a single organism	p. 9
Bee development	p. 10
Queen bees	p. 12
Worker bees	p. 15
Drone bees	p. 21
The politics of the hive, or 'who tells whom what to do?'	p. 23
The birth of a queen	p. 25
Colony nest requirements	p. 27
The beekeeper's role	p. 28
Summary	p. 29
Using the products of the hive and bees	p. 31
Producing honey	p. 31
Collecting pollen	p. 35
Harvesting royal jelly	p. 36
Producing beeswax	p. 38
Collecting propolis	p. 40
Producing venom	p. 42
Harvesting silk	p. 43
Summary	p. 44
Obtaining equipment and bees	p. 45
Acquiring beehives	p. 45
Choosing the type of beehive	p. 57
Buying second-hand hives	p. 59
Obtaining new hives or making your own	p. 60
Acquiring other beekeeping equipment	p. 60
Clothing	p. 63
Obtaining bees	p. 65
Acquiring gentle bees	p. 66
Starting beekeeping: a summary	p. 67
Acquiring the equipment	p. 69
When to obtain your bees	p. 69
What next?	p. 70
Starting with bees	p. 71
Positioning your hives	p. 71
Arranging insurance in rural and urban areas	p. 77
Your bees arrive	p. 77
Summary	p. 81
The active season: spring	p. 82
Starting in the springtime	p. 82
Swarming	p. 91
Supersedure	p. 109
Building up the colony	p. 110
Summary	p. 113
The active season: summer and autumn	p. 115
Taking your bees to harvest	p. 115
Supering up	p. 116
Harvesting honey	p. 118
Extracting the honey	p. 126
Analysing your extracted honey	p. 127
Dealing with the aftermath	p. 131
Producing comb honey	p. 132
Granulated and creamed honey	p. 135
Inspecting the hive post-harvest	p. 135
Marketing honey	p. 136
The year so far: a summary	p. 136
Dealing with problems	p. 138
Laying workers	p. 138
Coping with aggressive colonies	p. 141
Dealing with robber bees	p. 144
Uniting colonies	p. 146
Preventing spray damage	p. 148
Moving hives	p. 150
Dealing with queen problems	p. 152
Introducing a new queen: a summary	p. 160
Overwintering your bees: autumn to spring	p. 162
Preparing for winter	p. 162
Making feed mixes	p. 167
Storing sugar syrup	p. 170
The spring start	p. 171
The beekeeping year: a summary	p. 175
Controlling diseases and pests	p. 178
Managing diseases and pests	p. 178
Wax moth	p. 179
Brood diseases	p. 182
Other brood problems	p. 190
Adult bee diseases	p. 192
Other pests and disorders	p. 208
Yet other pests	p. 212
Summary	p. 214
Rearing queens and breeding bees	p. 216
Why rear your own queens?	p. 216
Choosing the time of year to re-queen	p. 217
Queen rearing: an outline	p. 218
Preparing the larvae	p. 218
Moving the larvae	p. 221
Rearing queens: methods	p. 222
Inducing supersedure	p. 232
Marking your queens	p. 232
Troubleshooting queen cells	p. 235
Assessing queen cells	p. 236
Assessing queens	p. 237
Keeping records	p. 237
Breeding queens	p. 237
Practical bee breeding	p. 242
A bee breeding system: an example	p. 246
Bee breeding: a summary	p. 247
Exploring products and career possibilities	p. 248
Pollination	p. 248
Harvesting other products of the hive	p. 252
Going organic	p. 264
Making a career in beekeeping	p. 266
Beekeeping around the world	p. 272
Finale	p. 273
Weights and measures ready-reckoner	p. 275
Further reading	p. 279
International beekeeping organizations	p. 283
Beekeeping charities	p. 285
Beekeeping journals	p. 287
Beekeeping supply companies	p. 289
Index	p. 293
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.