Beekeeping - Learn How to Keep Bees Successfully

When browsing the new releases at Amazon, I ran across this one for the Kindle: Beekeeping - Learn How to Keep Bees Successfully ($4.95). Unfortunately, this is one of those free books that keeps being posted around the internet as if it were written by the person posting it and with a misleading picture that implies it is a large hardback book, being distributed in ebook form.. This posting bmakes what looks like it's eleventh appearance in the Kindle store (the cheapest is $1.99).

Book Description
Here's everything and more that you'll learn with this 45 page guide:

Getting Started in Beekeeping
Clothing and Equipment Needed
How to Handle Bees
Acquiring Bees
Queen Management Techniques
Raising Queen Bees
Using Nectar and Pollen Substitutes
Keeping Bees in a Suburban Area
About Bacterial, Viruses and Fungal Diseases
About Varroa Mites and Tracheal Mites
The Small Hive Beetle
About Nosema
About the Disappearing Bees
Bee Stings and how to avoid them!
The Processing of Honey and the Equipment used for Honey Processing
Resources and References

I don't know about you, but that seems pretty ambitious for a 45 page book, even if this weren't a freebie being passed off as a comprehensive guide. If you want to pick it up in the Kindle store, be sure to check the formatting carefully. I'd be prepared to send an email off to Amazon Customer Service, as well, asking for a refund -- there are many more books out there on beekeeping that are both more comprehensive and written by true experts in either honeybee research or beekeeping, for not a lot more money (especially if calculated on a per-page cost).

If you are new to beekeeping, though, or looking for an overview suitable (perhaps; I haven't read this one in detail) as an introduction for in a homeschool curriculum, you can do a google search on the pamphlet's title and download from one of the many sites offering a free DOC or PDF copy, such as this one HERE (this one is a DOC file and their signup also gives you 56 more "books" on gardening, which are similar introductory pamphlets). However, I would recommend that you not provide any of these sites with your real name and email address -- use a throw-away account (used for signing up for this type of thing and abandoned after a few months) or a mailinator.com address instead.

Bargain Books and Reviews are moving

In order to let those who are more interested in gardening and beekeeping find the posts for these subjects, I'm moving the Books part of Bees (and Books) on the Knob to it's own blog: Books on the Knob. I'll leave all the book posts here at least thru the end of the year and have already migrated them over to the new site, so nothing will be missing. Make sure to update your bookmarks or RSS feed for the new location, as I'll continue to post my book reviews, info about free and bargain books and book contests around the 'net. Sometime after the first of the year, I'll remove the book only posts (except those that are book on gardening and beekeeping) and will stop dual posting on both sites. Hope to see you there!

Reading about Beekeepers

Unlike the references books of the past few posts, these are all books I'd love to see available on the Kindle. They are essentially memoirs of those who have raised honeybees for a living or as a hobby.

First, two from Sue Hubbell, the well known A Country Year: Living the Questions, which details her life on a 100 acre farm with 200 beehives, and her followup book A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them that has more about beekeeping tasks and when to do them, interspersed with her prose. Both are an honest look at the real work involved in having so many bees. And there is some manual labor in even one hive -- honey is heavy and so are the boxes and frames used for your hive; even bees add to the weight when a hive is densely populated, with a deep hive body full of honey and bees topping 90 lbs (fear not, there are ways to avoid lifting anything this heavy). By the second book, her farm has expanded to 300 hives, with some scattered about on other properties. All in all, it's a good description of a typical sideliner beekeeper, which is the title for those who have grown beyond the hobbyist level, but are not yet considered commercial beekeepers (who migrate their bees around the nation on a constant basis).

For the story of a commercial beekeeper, check out Bad Beekeeping. A young man from Pennsylvania buys a honey ranch, then ends up herding his bees from Florida in the winter (where he raises 10,000 queens) to the badlands of southern Saskatchewan in summer. Covering a ten year span, this is a look at one of the few people who have kept bees across the US-Canadian border.

For those more interested in the backyard beekeeper, look to Fifty Years Among the Bees. Although many of the practices are now outdated, this is a classic in beekeeping.

And finally, this one isn't about beekeeping at all. It's an English horror film that predates (1967) the scares of Africanized bees in the US. Keep this one on hand for those relatives that are convinced your bees are dangerous: The Deadly Bees. No matter how yours misbehave, they'll be a lot tamer than the bees depicted here. Don't confuse this one with The Birds, although the group of that name does make a cameo appearance.