First Time Beekeeping An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Beekeeping - A Step-by-Step Manual to Getting Started with Bees

by Flottum, Kim

• ISBN13: 9781631599514
• ISBN10: 1631599518
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2020-08-11
• Publisher: Quarry Books

Summary

This indispensable beekeeping reference—packed with helpful diagrams, color photos, and easy-to-follow yet thorough instruction—gently guides you through setting up and caring for your first colonies.

Are you an absolute beginner when it comes to keeping bees? With First Time Beekeeping, help is at hand. Featuring the sage advice of Bee Culture editor emeritus and best-selling author of The Backyard Beekeeper Kim Flottum, this is your step-by-step guide to healthy, happy, and productive hives.

This complete resource features expert beginner advice for:
 

• Setting up and caring for your own colonies
• Selecting the best location to place your new bee colonies for their safety and yours
• The most practical and nontoxic ways to care for your bees
• Harvesting the products of a beehive and collecting and using honey
• Bee problems and treatments

By following this advice, your colony or two of honey bees can pollinate the vegetables in your garden; produce wonderful honey and other beneficial products; and help your local ecosystem thrive. What could be sweeter?

Each book in the First Time series distills how-to guidance and advice from an expert on a specific topic into targeted step-by-step instruction geared toward the absolute beginner.

Author Biography

Kim Flottum brings a rich background of plant science, honey bee research, and basic farming to his 30 years as the editor of Bee Culture magazine, where his main occupation has been finding the answers to the multitude of questions that beginning, intermediate, and even advanced and experienced beekeepers bring to the table. He teaches beginning and advanced beekeeping courses, travels extensively to educate and lecture, and contributes to a variety of other publications on the basics of honey bees and beekeeping biology, the business of bees and pollination, producing and using varietal honeys, and a host of other subjects. He is the author of The Backyard Beekeeper, First Time Beekeeping, In Business with Bees, and Common Sense Natural Beekeeping. His books, magazine articles, interviews, and blogs are widely read for both their fundamental and advanced contribution to beekeeping knowledge. He is beekeeping's leading advocate for fundamental honey bee safety, including insuring excellent honey bee health, providing extraordinary forage, and minimizing the use of agricultural pesticides.

Table of Contents

PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
 
1 STARTING RIGHT
GETTING STARTED
BEEYARDS OTHER THAN BACKYARDS
EQUIPMENT: TOOLS OF THE TRADE
THE BEES
 
2 ABOUT BEES
THE QUEEN
THE WORKERS
FORAGERS
DRONES
 
3 ABOUT BEEKEEPING
LIGHTING YOUR SMOKER
PACKAGE MANAGEMENT
KEEPING RECORDS
OPENING A COLONY
INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT
MALADIES
COMB HONEY AND CUT-COMB HONEY
SUMMERTIME CHORES
LATE SUMMER HARVEST
FALL AND WINTER MANAGEMENT
EARLY SPRING INSPECTIONS
 
RESOURCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PHOTOGRAPHER CREDITS
INDEX