LibGuides: Mini-Farming: Beekeeping

Mini-Farming - Beekeeping

Beekeeping

Bees are vital to food production as they pollinate our crops. The humble honeybee is in danger -- several waves of die-offs have greatly reduced bee populations.

Beekeeping may be practiced on even the smallest plot of land, connecting you with nature and rewarding you with better crop yields and tasty local honey.

There is increasing interest in top-bar beekeeping, a very old technique that is generating grassroots "buzz". In contrast to the classic box hive (known as the "Langstroth" design) that is engineered for commercial honey production, top-bar hives encourage bees to maintain colonies the way they would in the wild and are easier and less expensive to construct in a variety of configurations. Top-bar hives lend themselves well to urban areas -- chances are that some of your neighbors host a hive or two, enriching the pollination of the whole neighborhood.

Albuquerque area beekeeper, Amy Owen speaks about beekeeping at South Broadway Library

Beekeeping Handbooks

Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health by Les Crowder; Heather Harrell
Call Number: 638.1 Crowder
Natural hive management for honey, beeswax, and pollination.
The author is a longtime beekeeper in New Mexico, formerly serving as a honeybee inspector for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. He is a noted proponent of both organic beekeeping and the use of top-bar hives, and many beekeepers in New Mexico use hives based on his designs.
Beekeepers continue to face tremendous challenges, from pests, diseases, pollution, climate change, and, in recent years, from the mysterious and devastating phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Yet in backyards and on rooftops all over the world, top-bar hives are being used to raise bees successfully without antibiotics, miticides, or other chemical inputs. - from the book jacket
The Beekeeper's Handbook, 4th Edition by Diana Sammataro; Alphonse Avitabile; Dewey M. Caron (Contribution by)
Call Number: 638.1 Sammataro 2011
Since 1973, tens of thousands of first-time and experienced beekeepers alike have relied on The Beekeeper's Handbook as the best single-volume guide to the hobby and profession of beekeeping. Featuring clear descriptions and authoritative content, this handbook provides step-by-step directions accompanied by more than 100 illustrations for setting up an apiary, handling bees, and working throughout the season to maintain a healthy colony of bees and a generous supply of honey. This book explains the various colony care options and techniques, noting advantages and disadvantages, so that beekeepers can make the best choices for their own hives. This fourth edition has been thoroughly redesigned, expanded, updated, and revised to incorporate the latest information on Colony Collapse Disorder, green IPM methods, regional overwintering protocols, and procedures for handling bees and managing diseases and pests such as African honey bees and bee mites. - from the book jacket
The Barefoot Beekeeper: a simple, sustainable approach to small-scale beekeeping using top bar hives by P. J. Chandler
Call Number: 638.1 Chandler 2009
THIRD EDITION (2009) - A revolutionary book about sustainable, chemical-free, 'natural' beekeeping, with no heavy lifting.The author strips away all complications, showing how you can make everything you need yourself, using recycled materials and simple tools: you do not need to buy any additional equipment at all!
Homegrown Honey Bees: an absolute beginners's guide to beekeeping : your first year, from hiving to honey harvest by Alethea Morrison; Mars Vilaubi (Photographer)
Call Number: 638.1 Morrison
This beginner's guide to beekeeping clearly explains everything you need to know, from getting your first bees to harvesting your first crop of honey. Spectacular macro photography brings the inner workings of the hive to life, while the playful text gives you the information you need to make it through your first year. Everything is addressed here, from allergies, permits and restrictions, and how to deal with the neighbors to hive structure, colony hierarchy, and bee behavior.
The Thinking Beekeeper: a guide to natural beekeeping in top bar hives by Christy Hemenway
Call Number: 638.1 Hemenway
What's the buzz about the growing popularity of backyard beekeeping? Providing habitat for bees, pollinating your garden and producing honey for your family are some of the compelling reasons for taking up this exciting hobby. But conventional beekeeping requires a significant investment and has a steep learning curve.
The alternative? Consider beekeeping outside the box. The Thinking Beekeeper is the definitive do-it-yourself guide to natural beekeeping in top bar hives. Based on the concept of understanding and working with bees' natural systems as opposed to trying to subvert them, the advantages of this approach include: simplicity, sustainability and cost-effectiveness; increased safety due to less heavy lifting and hive manipulation; chemical-free colonies and healthy hives. Top bar hives can be located anywhere bees have access to forage, and they make ideal urban hives due to their small footprint.
The Backyard Beekeeper by Kim Flottum; Weeks Ringle
Call Number: 638.1 Flottum
This book isn't only a guide to beekeeping or a honey cookbook; it's both. No other book on the market provides an in-depth review of beekeeping and what honey is good for and how to use it. Beautifully illustrated, The Backyard Beekeeper is perfect for the health conscious person who wants to sweeten up their life by saying no to processed sugars and yes, to eating organic, natural healthy food. This book is the complete "honey bee" resource with general information on bees, a how-to guide to the art of bee keeping and how to set up, care for and harvest your own hives, as well as tons of fun facts and projects that are bee related. The second half of the book is the complete guide to honey. It reviews the different types of honey, health effects as well as provides 100s of ideas and recipes for using honey in recipes, cosmetically in facemasks and shampoos, and for medicinal uses.
Get Started in Urban Beekeeping by Claire Waring; Adrian Waring
Publication Date: 2016-06-21
Written by two of the UK's most well-known and respected experts in the beekeeping community, this is the definitive, and most authoritative, guide to keeping bees in a city environment. Straightforward, up-to-date, and systematically organized, this book covers everything you might need, whether you're already an urban beekeeper or just starting out. It gives practical and clear information on the essentials that all apiarists need (whether in or out of the city), while covering in detail the particular requirements of urban bees. Specifically designed to be interactive, and easy to use, this at a glance title also features write-in checklists, interactive boxes in which you can record key information and dates, and a calendar that tells you what to do when and reminds you to carry out regular beekeeping tasks.
Save the Bees with Natural Backyard Hives by Rob McFarland; Chelsea McFarland
Publication Date: 2015-11-10
You don't need to live on a farm to raise happy, healthy honeybees. All it takes is a small backyard and the guidance of Rob and Chelsea McFarland, founders of HoneyLove - a Los Angeles-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting honeybees and educating a new generation of urban, suburban and rural beekeepers. Beekeeping is a relaxing and intriguing hobby that requires little time. It yields fresh, local honey beekeepers can keep or share, and bees help pollinate nearby gardens, trees and crops, which need help. Around the country, bee populations are declining - in part because bees raised to pollinate crops are not as durable as wild bees. Better Beekeeping has the solution. Better Beekeeping will walk readers through the inexpensive and easy to use equipment, their method for acquiring a hive for free, caring for the bees as they grow their colony, harvesting honey and prepping their bees for the cooler months. With the Better Beekeeping approach, readers will learn to attract wild bees. Factory-farmed bees are often advertised as "natural" but require farmers to use chemicals and pesticides to keep them alive. The Better Beekeeping approach does not use chemicals or pesticides and, instead, opts for natural care and management. With minimal upkeep, the hives will pollinate local crops and flowers and provide a bounty of delicious, all-natural, backyard honey.
Building Beehives for Dummies by Howland Blackiston
Call Number: 638.1 Blackiston
The easy way to build your own beehives and beekeeping equipment Building Beehives For Dummies is the follow-up book to the bestselling Beekeeping For Dummies. It provides everything you need to learn how to build some of the world's most popular hives and beekeeping accessories. For each design the book includes a detailed materials list (what lumber, hardware and fasteners you'll need), step-by-step building instructions, and illustrative drawings that show how the components all fit together. There are over a dozen plans in all, including the traditional Langstroth hive, the eight frame garden hive, designs for elevated hive stands, the Warre hive, screened bottom board, the Kenya top-bar hive, four-frame observation hive, hive top feeders, and more. The book contains introductory chapters that teach you the basic carpentry skills necessary to build any of the plans in the book. Whether you are a new beekeeper or a seasoned ol'timer, Building Beehives for Dummies provides you with the information you need to plan and succeed at building beehives (and other cool accessories). You'll discover what type of hive to build, hints on how to maintain your equipment, what bees need to stay happy and healthy, where to locate your hive, and much more.
Beekeeping by Werner Melzer
Call Number: 638.1 Melzer
Discusses the life cycle, diseases, habits and behavior of bees and offersnstruction in the care and management, equipment and supplies necessary foreekeeping.
Better Beekeeping [eBook] by Kim Flottum
Better Beekeeping answers the question, "What do I do now that I'm a beekeeper?" This book takes serious beekeepers past the beginning stages and learning curves and offers solutions and rewards for keeping bees a better way. Better queens, better winters, better food, and better bees await any beekeeper willing to take on the challenge of having the right number of bees, of the right age, in the right place, in the right condition, at the right time.
The Complete Step-by-Step Book of Beekeeping : a practical guide to beekeeping, from setting up a colony to hive management and harvesting the honey, shown in over 400 photographs by David Cramp
Call Number: 638.1 Cramp
This book gives information on the way the hive works, handling the bees, and how to get your bees and transfer them to the hive. A useful calendar shows you at a glance when to inspect, maintain and repair the hive and how to harvest the honey.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping by Dean Stiglitz; Laurie Herboldsheimer
Call Number: 638.1 Stiglitz
The buzz on beekeeping. The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to Beekeeping has all the information a beginning beekeeper needs to know to start a hive and keep it buzzing. Expert beekeepers Dean Stiglitz and Laurie Herboldsheimer, owners of Golden Rule Honey, take readers step by step through the entire process-from information on the inhabitants of a hive and how it works to collecting bees, keeping them healthy, raising a queen, harvesting honey and wax, and storing hives for the off- season.
Beekeeping: a practical guide by Richard E. Bonney; Sandra Webb (Editor)
Call Number: 638.1 Bonney
Whether you're a beginning beekeeper or one with a season or two of experience, Richard Bonney tells you how to keep bees successfully. With this practical guide, you'll learn every step of the process, from acquiring bees to installing a colony, managing a hive, preventing and treating diseases, and taking a crop of honey.
The Complete Guide to Beekeeping by Roger A. Morse
Call Number: 638.1 M886 1986
Includes methods and recipes for making mead (honey wine)
Bees and Beekeeping - How to Start in Beekeeping - Spring Management - Summer Management - Removing the Crop - The Fall Crop and Fall Management - Wintering Bees - Predators and Diseases - The Queen - Special Practices - Major and Minor Honey Plants - Pollination - The Biology of the Honeybee - Honey Wine
Confessions of a Bad Beekeeper [eBook] by Bill Turnbull
Bill Turnbull had no intention of becoming a beekeeper. But when he saw an ad for beekeeping classes-after a swarm of bees landed in his suburban backyard-it seemed to be a sign. Despite being stung on the head-twice-at his first hands-on beekeeping class, Turnbull found himself falling in love with the fascinating, infuriating honeybee. As a new beekeeper, Turnbull misplaced equipment for months, got stung more times-and in more places-than he cares to remember, and once even lost some bees up a chimney. But he kept at it, with a ready sense of humor and Zen-like acceptance of every mishap. And somehow, along the way, he learned a great deal about himself and the world around him. Confessions of a Bad Beekeeper chronicles Turnbull's misadventures (and brief moments of triumph) in the curious world of backyard beekeeping-and also highlights both the threat to our bee population and what we can do to help these vital little creatures do their wonderful work.
Langstroth's Hive and the Honey-Bee by L. L. Langstroth
Call Number: 638.1 Langstroth
The first (1853) descriptive treatise of modern bee management. In a reader-friendly, enthusiastic style, Langstroth addresses every aspect of beekeeping: bee physiology; diseases and enemies of bees; the life-cycles of the queen, drone, and worker; bee-hives; the handling of bees; and many other topics. 25 plates. Unabridged republication of the classic 1878 (fourth) edition.
Beekeeping for Dummies [eBook] by Howland Blackiston
Beekeeping For Dummies reviews the tools of the trade, including complete instructions for building and maintaining beehives; offers detailed and easy-to-follow guidelines for all phases of honey production--including harvesting, bottling, packaging and marketing your honey; explores theories into the recent unexplained collapse of colonies and its environmental and economic on society; and provides new information on mites and diseases and recommend changes in bee medication and treatments.
The Biology of the Honey Bee by Mark L. Winston
Call Number: 595.799 Winston
From ancient cave paintings of honey bee nests to modern science's richly diversified investigation of honey bee biology and its applications, the human imagination has long been captivated by the mysterious and highly sophisticated behavior of this paragon among insect societies. In the first broad treatment of honey bee biology to appear in decades, Mark Winston provides rare access to the world of this extraordinary insect. In a bright and engaging style Winston probes the dynamics of the honey bee's social organization. He recreates for us the complex infrastructure of the nest, describes the highly specialized behavior of workers, queens, and drones, and examines in detail the remarkable ability of the honey bee colony to regulate its functions according to events within and outside the nest.
Honey Bee Hobbyist [eBook] : the care and keeping of bees by Norman Gary
Bee keeping isn't just for the professional farmer -- bees can be kept in any situation from the simple backyard patio and garden to large expanses of farm land. This comprehensive and attractive beekeeping guide, from Hobby Farm Press, the same people who bring you Hobby Farms and Hobby Farm Home magazine, Beekeeping takes readers from finding their bees, housing them, collecting honey and using their produce for pleasure and possible profit. This colorful book, including entertaining chapters on the history of bees and beekeeping, serves as an extensive introduction to help novice beekeepers fully understand this exciting hobby!