The Beginner's Guide to Beekeeping: Everything You Need to Know

358 Pages·2013·48.63 MB·English

by  Daniel Johnson

THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO
BEEKEEPING
SAMANTHA JOHNSON
AND DANIEL JOHNSON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
Getting to Know Your Bees
CHAPTER 2
Starting Out as a Beekeeper
CHAPTER 3
Installing Bees and Routine Care
CHAPTER 4
Pests, Diseases, and Problems
CHAPTER 5
Sweet Rewards: Honey!
CHAPTER 6
Marketing Your Hive Products
CHAPTER 7
Having Fun with Your Bees
CHAPTER 8
Recipes
APPENDIX: RESOURCES
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
As bees in early summer swarm apace
Through flowery fields, when forth from dale and dell
They lead the full-grown offspring of the race,
Or with liquid honey store each cell
And make the teeming hive with nectarous sweets to swell.
These ease the comers of their loads, those
Drive the drones afar. The busy work each plies
And sweet with thyme and honey smells the hive.
—VIRGIL’S AENEID, BOOK 1
Welcome to the world of beekeeping! We’re excited that you’ve decided to
explore this enjoyable, fascinating, and potentially tasty hobby. Our hope in
writing this book is that bee-ginning beekeepers will find some helpful tips for
getting started, that more advanced beekeepers will pick up some new ideas and
further their knowledge, and that everyone will have some fun along the way.
We’ll do our best to tell you everything you need to know in order to
successfully raise a hive, harvest honey, and be a part of this rapidly growing
community of beekeepers. And we’ll do our best not to overwhelm you with bee
humor and puns (although restraining ourselves will bee hard to do!).
So why keep bees? Beekeeping interests people for many different reasons,
but here are a few of our favorites: 1. Bees make honey! This one is pretty
obvious. There is nothing like the satisfaction of enjoying the sweet produce of
your hives.
2. Bees make beeswax. Bees make more than just honey, you know! Additional
products from your hive include beeswax and pollen, which—along with your
honey—can be used to make a wide variety of products from candles to soaps.
We’ll discuss all of this in greater detail later on.
Beekeeping is a fascinating hobby and the number of beekeepers in the United States is increasing. It is
becoming more and more popular in urban locations as well as remaining very important in our rural areas.
FASCINATING FACTS
• The top honey-producing state is North Dakota.
• To produce a single pound of honey, bees must visit as many as two
million flowers and travel an accumulated distance of 50,000 miles.
• A colony of bees can contain as many as 60,000 bees.
• In her lifetime, an average female honey bee can fly a distance equal to
going 1 1/2 times around the earth.
• According to a USDA estimate, cited by the National Honey Board,
bees are responsible for 80 percent of insect crop pollination in the
United States.
• Bees fly approximately 15 miles per hour.
For many people, the best part of raising bees is the harvest of honey.
In addition to pollination and honey, beeswax is another wonderful benefit of raising bees—it’s an immensely
useful product in a number of ways!
3. Bees are fascinating. Really, until you’ve spent some time observing the
habits of these little creatures, you won’t appreciate how truly amazing they
are, from their organization to their socialization. You’ll witness the life cycle
of the bees, from egg to adult, as well as their fantastic work ethic.
4. Bees aid farmers and gardeners. While in the process of travelling from