Book Review: Beeswax Alchemy

So, I've been executing DIY projects for work and decide that, hey, since I'm providing my knowledge and skills for free, I should be compensated with a book. Thank you boss-lady for giving me a corporate Amex! An apt prop for the DIY of the moment, Make a Citronella Candle, I chose Beeswax Alchemy by Petra Ahnert. I recently received a cache of candle-making supplies from fellow Instagrammer, beekeeper and blogger, @meemsnyc, and after struggling with 2 rounds of votive-making, hoped this book would divulge the tips and tricks that a good book does.

Pouring a self-contained candle, for which there are no instructions.

Product Review: UltraBreeze Bee Suit

See more photos on my Tumblr.

From the beginning, the only protective clothing we wore were gloves and veils. But after becoming allergic to bee stings, I invested in a full bee suit. I've worn it through three honey harvests, which is when bees can be at their testiest, so I think I can give a qualified review of my UltraBreeze.

Many Langstroth- or Warré-style beekeepers harvest once over Labor Day weekend, as in this photo, when the weather may be cool. Harvesting from a Top Bar Hive, however, is done throughout the season. Particularly with a small TBH like ours, harvesting must be done continuously as a swarm control measure. A Summer harvest often coincides with really hot weather when most bee suits are unweareable.

The UltraBreeze is made of three layers of meshy fabric. This makes it a) ventilated, b) so thick that stingers can't reach you inside and c) heavy. Once you put it on, it doesn't feel heavy, though. While I've not had any issues with heat or stings, I do find the mesh challenging in a branchy environment. Sticks and twigs tend to get caught, particularly the hood if not being mindful of what's behind me. I tend to be very focused on the bees during an inspection, not on the environment, so I've walked away from hives with little twigs sticking out of my head.

The suit is expertly sewn, and the hood, body and legs have super high quality zippers which add to the weight. The leg zippers are long so you can really open them up and put the suit on without taking off your shoes. The sleeves and legs are elastic-cuffed so bees can't crawl in after you're zipped up. I pull my long gloves over the sleeves and while it's a lot of material, my mobility is not hindered. The legs are generously long, for me, so crouching and kneeling to peer into observation windows is comfortable. The elastic cuffs secure around your boot shafts keep your ankles protected but, again with the mesh, sometimes I'll come up with sticks and twigs stuck in the knees.

There is a small Velcro bit that seals the meeting of zippers at body and hood, which completely zips off if you'd like to use your favorite veil instead. The attached dome veil is just as comfortable as our Alexander veil or "hatless" veil, and visibility is perfect so I don't make any swaps. I've gotten into the habit of wearing a ballcap under all our veils, to keep the hair out of my eyes, and the UltraBreeze hood easily pulls over my head with the ballcap already on. The rim doesn't rub the screen, which tells you that it is held nicely away from your face.

The suit has six pockets, two fully lined so your standard hive tool won't get caught on the mesh. I put my tiny point-n-shoot in the hip pocket, and it's easy to get out even with my leather gloves on.

Even after I'm done with Venom Immunotherapy (in another 2-4 years), I'll be wearing my UltraBreeze. Yes, a sting or two won't kill me but they're just not pleasant so why not protect myself? Besides, the suit cost many pretty pennies and it would hurt me worse to have my UltraBreeze stashed away in a closet.

Ultrabreeze makes a hooded jacket so if you're looking for a less costly alternative to the jumpsuit, that's an option. The Instagram image below shows a close-up of the fabric.

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You may also be interested in www.bugbaffler.com/collections/insect-protection

Book Review: Getting the Best From Your Bees

"A fully established colony normally
takes a year to establish."

I found out about this book on Chris Slade's Bee Blog. The blog entries are well-written, and I thought the author might share good information in his book. I don't know who wrote Getting the Best from Your Bees, but it doesn't seem like the same person was involved at all. The book seriously needs an editor, as many of the sentences make poor sense. For example:

GTBFYB: "Take out an end frame, look for the queen then lay it (the frame not the queen) flat on the side of the hive furthest from you."

ME: Personally I'd've written "against the side" rather than "flat on the side." Picky? Yes, I am, but it makes a difference. And what if the hive furthest from me is across the yard?

GTBFYB: "If a frame becomes jammed, …then leverage with the hive tool may well pull the frame apart. It is better to hammer the nails horizontally through the side bars…"

ME: What? Oh, you're talking about how the frame should've been assembled in the way-back time, not suggesting to hammer the nails during an inspection (the topic of the paragraph).

Probably a result of being co-authored, the book might as well have been titled Ramblings of a Couple of Beekeepers. Many paragraphs are completely unrelated to the one previous or subsequent and, without a proper train of thought, I find myself unable to focus on what the authors are saying. I'm thrown off by things like a sudden change in subject from hive inspection to feeding. A paragraph leads off by saying one of the authors is fervently against feeding established colonies, but is quickly followed by several suggestions on what and how to feed. The use of "however" or "although" doesn't seem part of these authors' style, and it's confusing.

I embarrassed to admit that I was tricked into buying this book by its title. A good editor would never have allowed a book so-titled to have a section on Colony Management that is barely more than a page. The section on Beekeeping Equipment is even smaller. It's really 4 pictures of cork hives in Spain with captions. Really? Really.

I've never returned anything to Amazon before, but I wouldn't even stick the poor library with this one. It's goin' back ASAP. You can rest assured that if I ever self-publish a book, it'll be well-edited. I happen to know a great editor who's also a beekeeper… I'm married to him!

Harumph!

Let me preface this post by stating that I'm rather cranky right now, having just learned that not only am I very allergic to honeybee sting, the four other venoms in the category will cause anaphylaxis as well, so if I do proceed with the desensitization therapy it will cost me the maximum amount possible, none covered by insurance as a result of my $5,000 deductible.

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7" Galaxy Tab screenshot

App Review: ABJ

American Bee Journal, which first came into print in 1861, has been available digitally via "Online delivery" for several years, providing subscribers with an electronic duplicate of the print edition but enhanced with live links.* Now with the ABJ app, available for both AppleOS and Android devices, you can read the magazine on a tablet. A digital subscription is $16/year, or you can purchase a 3-month subscription for just $3.99 like I did.

Downloading my first issue was easy, requiring a simple tap on the cover. Navigation from page to page is fairly simple and intuitive. But I am glad I only splurged for a trial, as I found the magazine very difficult to actually read. Zooming on my tablet was neither smooth nor quick, and after rendering the enlarged image, moving the page was herky jerky. The cognitive impairment I have from MdDS causes me to lose the meaning of a sentence before I've gotten to the period, so physically losing the beginning of a sentence when the end would finally come into focus made the issue impossible to read, really.

Online delivery. What exactly does that mean? One might think as I did, that the next issues would be, oh I don't know, delivered. Nope. Dadant is supposed to alert you when a new issue is available for download. Fail. Every once in awhile I would just launch the app and browse the new covers, hoping for a really worthwhile issue to become available. I never could quite read the covers, though, so I just had the one issue I had picked at random. Or so I thought.

You can tell which issue you've already "downloaded" by the turned down corner. The issues you haven't downloaded invite you to do so with a big arrow. That's about the only thing that's big, unfortunately. I found the teaser copy on the covers frustratingly small and illegible, and you can't zoom so you just have to guess what the issue topics are.

Download. What exactly does that mean? It turns out, the issue is not truly downloaded to your device. One day I launched the app to see if any new issues might be worth the eye strain. The app asked me to log in! Apparently my subscription had ended (again no notice received), and I didn't even have access to the one issue with the turned down corner. In the current version (2.3.11), issues can only be read in-app if you are an active subscriber. When your subscription expires the only way to read the issues you've purchased is if you've downloaded them as PDFs.** Dadant customer service granted me an extension, just long enough to grab a couple issues via my PC where a nice big monitor enabled me to read the covers. I now have 3 issues on my PC, which I suppose I could house in Google Drive for access on my tablet, but that's a lot of work considering the issues exist within the app which resides on my tablet already.

I have to give Dadant props. They are a beekeeping supply company run by beekeepers for beekeepers. But if you're going to do something, do it right. You can't just put out an app because everyone and their uncle has one. Although Windows8 is blurring the lines between mobile and desktop experiences, user expectations are completely different. An app is for mobile devices. We want everything now, where ever we are, we want it fast, pinch and zoomable, and we want it all in-app. If your app doesn't deliver seamlessly on-the-go it's a dud. So there you have it. ABJ is a dud.

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* as long as you are using their BlueToad reader.
**If you download the PDF version for offline reading, the links are not activated. Somehow I managed to bookmark a couple of issues hosted on their server. Again, links are not activated, but check 'em out and see what you think about ABJ: April 2013 May 2013

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You may be interested in: "Top-Bar Hives Reveal Subtle Comb-Building Behavior" by Dr. Wyatt Mangum in American Bee Journal — December 2011 Vol. 151 No. 12

Les Crowder's Top-Bar Beekeeping Book

TOP-BAR BEEKEEPING: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health

A picture is worth a thousand words. Ten pages of pictures is worth $17.95 plus $3.50 flat-rate shipping.

Chelsea Green Publishing has been kind enough to upload much more than a thousand words in this excerpt from Top-Bar Beekeeping by Les Crowder and Heather Harrell You can even print out Les Crowder's Top Bar Hive Plans.

Bee Review, a New Hive, and a Mini-update on the Swarm

Grampa's Gourmet Ol' School Survivor bees are a lot smarter than other bees we've kept. They fly out of the hive in a much more decided way. They know exactly where they're going and they waste not a microsecond in getting there. Sorties shoot out of the hive low and fast. There's little time for anyone to react if you're in their flight path.

They know how to drink out of the bird bath without drowning. They've even figured out how to walk down the sedum at the edge of the plastic pond for a safe drink. But they're also a bit more aggressive, sometimes harassing us a good 15-20 feet away from the hive. It might be just one bee, but chances are she'll go for your head. My recent sting wasn't bad at all, but apparently I've been traumatized by having four bees stuck in my hair. The sound of a loud buzz anywhere near my head will put me in double-time mode, which is not conducive to slow graceful moves.

The GG Survivor bees have been in the Backyard for three weeks, and the first round of brood is emerging in the hybrid hive (the Langstroth deep on top of the Top Bar Hive). The swarm bees are just days behind in their nuc box. It's time to hive everyone permanently. Now, here is one of the reasons why I still consider myself a beginner beekeeper. I want to get them all hived now not because they've built up to the point of being crowded, which would be the wise thing to do, but because I know all these new bees will be too young to sting. We've kept bees for four years, and yet I'm still scared of being stung. These Ol' School Survivor bees have pulled the rug of experience from under me and sent me back to the beginning. (And this scary Tale of an Urban Bee Farmer doesn't help matters.)

Oh BTW, our new addition, the Warré Hive, is finally here and ready to receive the swarm bees. We'll start with them... Watch for a tweet about their hiving.

...and a Mini Book Review

After we caught the swarm, I referenced every beekeeping book we own and, while many books give instructions on how to retrieve a swarm, there is little information on what to do with it after you have it in a box. I guess the assumption is that you proceed as if working with package bees, since they too are loose bees with a queen, but that doesn't work for me. For one, packages are 3- or 4-lbs of bees, while swarms are many different sizes. I doubt that our swarm weighed even one pound. Package queens are guaranteed mated and laying, but a swarm might have a seasoned queen or might have a virgin queen. Second, we didn't even have a hive for them! I mail ordered it after they entered the bait box. At any rate, I did find some useful information in a book titled "Beekeeping: A Seasonal Guide" by Ron Brown. The book is a bit too advanced for me, actually, so I can't give it a proper review yet. Right now, I can only say it's a good one to have on your shelves.

Book Review: The Art & Adventure of Beekeeping

by Ormond and Harry Aebi (©1975)

Art & Adventure, now out of print, is the only book I've heard Marty Hardison recommend. He began keeping bees about the time the book was published, and I can see that it influences him even today.

The Aebis kept bees in Oregon and California, and their book gives very specific details regarding keeping bees there, particularly Santa Cruz. Remember, beekeeping is a localized specialty, so if you're a Santa Cruzan, this book could be particularly useful to you.

The book focuses on their goal of maximizing honey production to break a world record for honey from one hive, though they clearly had a love of bees and nature. (Disregard the paragraph where Ormond suggests dowsing the ground-nest of wasps with 2 quarts of used crank case oil and stabbing the Earth repeatedly with a spade.)

Surplus honey production isn't our focus, but understanding how to enable the bees to put up ample stores for themselves is a goal every beekeeper should have. Here are some things we had not read or heard before (in bold), followed by my read-between-the-lines interpretation.

Book Review: Honey and Dust

Honey and Dust: Travels in Search of Sweetness by Piers Moore Ede

"Chinese poetry speaks of something called 'the dust world'. The term occurs often, especially in the work of the Taoist poets of the T'ang dynasty, who were also concerned about the plight of nature. 'The dust world' was what they called that mundane area of human affairs – unimportant, to their mind, beside the vastness and profundity of the wild. For some reason this term stayed very much in my mind during the period of the accident and the adventures which came after. It seemed so fitting as a motif of what I was running from. Honey on the other hand, with all its myriad connotations, seemed exactly what I should be running towards."- excerpt from Chapter Two

Having been seriously injured, the author falls into a depression and has to discover how to live again. He begins with a quest to find beekeepers and real honey, starting in Italy.

I, like another reviewer, struggled with the personal narrative. But after reading and digesting the memoir, the beginning explained the end. Ede's near-fatal accident was his personal "dust" to put aside, which he finally realizes in the part of the book that seemed most out-of-place, as it has nothing to do with beekeeping or honey. But in the end, his meditation retreat has everything to do with Sweetness. The book is as much about his physical travels as it is about his metaphorical journey to understand the Sweetness of Being.

"So I started breathing again. Returned my attention to the breath. The heart slowed. A calm came over me. The image faded, the mind still once again as I sat, waging my own internal war against the world, which is nothing but my own imagination."

And so it is with beekeeping. When you stop thinking about whether the neighbors will flip out or about getting stung, whatever your personal dust might be — and just observe — your breathing, their voice, the mesmerizing coming and going — that is the Sweetness of Being.

To celebrate the Turn of Days and start of a new year, we wish you a dust-free holiday and Sweet year ahead. -- BB and HB

Book Review: Plan Bee

by Susan Brackney
It all started with chickens. A familiar beginning to a familiar story. Here we have another accidental beekeeper, telling her story of becoming a beekeeper, weaving in some facts, history and lore, and hoping you, too, find yourself smitten by the honeybee.

Likes: very light reading and the author's fessing up to a multitude of beginner errors. Though I have not tested any, there are some recipes, too.
Dislikes: I'd NEVER make it far on Fear Factor, so it bothers me that people out there think it's perfectly fine to process honey by crushing honeycombs with brood and all. Beginner or not, that's just gross.

BTW, I found Plan Bee for $5 at The Tattered Cover on the bargain bookshelf. Check it out. You just might find a little treasure yourself.

A Closer Look: Bee Culture vs ABJ

Goldenrod pollen under a microscope.

Bee Culture and American Bee Journal are the two primary magazines for beekeepers in the US. They are not sold on newsstands, so I paid for subscriptions. Once a month, they arrive in my mailbox within a day or two of each other and I eagerly read them both.

My brain is hypersensitive to all manner of sensory inputs, and initially they both urked me with their plethora of spelling and grammatical errors, and just poor editing. The content of the magazines is good, though. Both try to serve commercial beekeepers as well as the surge of new hobbyists, and it makes for a good mix. The topics covered are similar, so much so that there is one story that appears in both titles this month. Having decided that they are too similar to subscribe to both, I am unable to pick which one. I need your help. I'm going to tell you what I like/don't like about each, and if you subscribe I want to know what you like/don't like.

Bee Culture
"The Inner Cover," Kim Flottum's editorial column each month is usually pretty interesting, and he's even mentioned his Top Bar Hive once or twice, but Catch the Buzz is just as interesting and free. (Bee Culture's blog seems to have fallen by the wayside, but it's worth adding to your Feedly or Flipboard.) The closing article of the magazine each month, "The Bottom Board," is by Ed Colby. He keeps bees on Aspen Mountain and while that may be a few hours from here, it's still Colorado. When you don't have a mentor readily available, reading what a "local" has to say every month is nice. The content in between? Over the course of the past year, I bookmarked just 3 articles for future reference.

American Bee Journal
Like the driver in front of me turning his head around backwards to see the accident on the other side of the highway, for some reason I read the "Classroom" Q&A section. Jerry Hayes has a way with words that seems abrasive to me, but if you ignore the delivery and pay attention to the information, the section usually has some tidbit of useful information. Occasionally, Dr. Wyatt Mangum will write an article on Top Bar Hives. Over the course of the past year, I bookmarked 4 articles for future reference, including this month's (Dec2011) article on top entrances and management of Top Bar Hives. (The second TBH we just built is just begging for modification.)

Want to take a closer look? Ask the Circulation Manager for a free sample issue of Bee Culture here. For a sample of ABJ go here. Both magazines run about $25 for a year, which isn't a lot but could mean the difference between buying that honey refractometer or not. If you call to subscribe, you can get a 20% (?) discount by telling them you belong to a bee club. I don't know if it works for renewals but I will find out for sure. Leave a comment if you want to know the answer. poke poke.

YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN:
I've got an archive of actual magazine up for grabs. Bee Culture January 2011–January 2012 and American Bee Journal February 2011–January 2012. You pay for postage, and they're yours. Email if interested.

Book Review: Honeybee

C. Marina Marchese's "Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper" is different from most beekeeping books. The author herself is the honeybee in the title, and the book is an autobiographical account of her journey away from the rat race to urban beekeeper and honey connoisseur. It's a very easy read, yet it is loaded with facts: simple statements laced together with vivid memories of her discovery of the specialness of the bee and of honey. I learned several new things yet never felt heavy from the reading. My only complaint, really, is the plethora of typos.

Likening herself to the Queen bee, the author's East Coast attitude was a bit of a put-off for me, but in person she's not like that at all. The Denver Bee Keeping Society recently sponsored a book reading and honey tasting event with Marina, and we were pleasantly surprised to learn she has a Top Bar Hive in her apiary. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to talk to her in depth about it, but that's what happens at multifaceted events – things get a little crazy.

Things I Learned
From the Book: a "balled" queen is surrounded by a cluster of worker bees who overheat her to kill her off (usually during a supersedure). This must be what happened to our queen in June 2009!
From the Honey Tasting: solid lids, people, solid lids. Two-piece lids are a messy pain; they are for processed jams and jellies, not honey. And for an honest tasting, forget the wooden stir-sticks. They make all the honeys taste woodsy.

The author's inscription: Bee Good to Yourself… Everyday.

Book Review: A Short History of the Honeybee

"Although in our over-sugared age, honey has been demoted to something smeared on toast, squeezed into a glass of ice tea, flavor as unnoticed as change that's slipped between couch cushions, time was, honey was sacred. The ancients considered honey a kind of magic: treasured for its purity, the fact that it never spoils, never corrupts. The thick fluid was not only the sweetest flavor they had found in nature, but the taste closest to the perfection of the gods—gods who drank nectar in some cultures, the same substance the bees went after."

This excerpt should give you an idea of how much history comes into play in this book. It's more of a poetic account, a memoir almost, of E. Readicker-Henderson's love of and quest for the "taste of the landscape"— honey. He worships the honeybee in his depiction on how honey comes to be. Despite a couple of disturbingly incorrect statements, it's a pleasant read. And although I could quibble over some of the captions as well, the imagery is absolutely beautiful.

Thanks, J, for the gift.

Book Review: Beekeeping for Dummies

by Howland Blackiston

I bought this book at full price, which is a rare occasion indeed, but I fully intended on leafing through then returning it. A year later, I am using the receipt as a bookmark.

Likes: a comprehensive guide for the beginner. There's a lot one could bookmark, but these are my favorite sections:

• section on the life of the worker, describing her development and corresponding duties as a house bee (so if you see a bee extruding a wax flake, for example, you know she's at least 12 days old)
• pictorial instructions on hiving a package of bees
• week-by-week inspection checklist for the first 8 weeks after hiving your bees – it's nice to have detailed guidance on what you're supposed to be looking for, and why it's important.

For Top Bar Hivers lucky enough (or unlucky, depending on your POV) starting with ready-to-use brood and honey combs, no adjustments are needed. Since we have combs from our failed colony, we'll be using this checklist once our package is installed this weekend.

For Top Bar Hivers starting from scratch, I recommend giving the bees a couple extra days than the book says, to build combs before peeking into the hive. A swarm of bees gets busy building comb and stocking the pantry, and they work surprisingly fast. But the book is written for Lang-style beekeepers, and their bees typically* have the head-start of having foundation. If your bees have nothing but fresh top bars to build on, then instead of opening the hive on the fifth day to see if the queen was released (in the case of a package) or laying (in the case of a swarm), I'd wait 'til the 7th or 8th day, respectively. After that, the checklist should be the same.

Dislikes: mostly text and, with the exception of the afore-mentioned pictorial, the few photos aren't very useful (or inspiring).

To whet your appetite and entice you to buy the book, the Dummies folk have put the essentials online; http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-essentials-of-setting-up-a-backyard-beehive.html

*Be sure to check out beekeeperlinda, who's going foundationless in Atlanta, GA. She's on the blogroll.

DVD Review: Tales from the Hive

A must-see! Special lenses and some serious ingenuity were used to give you a bee's eye view of life in and out of the hive. The footage of the queen on her mating flight is just amazing... and gross. (For another film on queen mating, click here. Give it a few minutes to upload, or the stream will be extremely choppy.)

Find out how they were able to film bees in flight, get up-close in the brood nest, and capture other spectacular video on the companion site.

Book Review: The Barefoot Beekeeper

by Phil Chandler

The Barefoot Beekeeper is the only book written for Top Bar Hive beekeepers that we've found available in print. The author is the force behind biobees.com, the companion site if you will, and the forum is a must-join for anyone who has or is considering having a TBH. Now in its 3rd ed., the book is written for beginners and covers beekeeping from getting your bees to advanced techniques in your second year. There's also some history on beekeeping and, while it serves to give reason for beekeeping a "better" way, it does not slanderize traditional (i.e.: Langstroth hive) beekeepers at all. The Dalai Lama would be pleased.

Likes

• instantly downloadable, as are instructions for building a TBH
• provides practical instruction on using a TBH to raise bees sustainably, some favorite pointers being: 
• inspections s/b be conducted when the foragers are out (i.e.: thousands less bees to deal with)
  
• an average colony (in Britain) needs 30-40 lbs of stored honey for Winter; if you live in a colder climate your bees may get by on less.
  
• when introducing a swarm, dust the bees with powdered sugar, which will give the bees a quick meal and also cause hitchhiking Varroa to fall off.
  
• gives proven alternatives to using chemicals or even a smoker 
• any lingering questions can be asked on the forum

Dislikes
The biobee hive design utilizes a side entrance, two follower boards and a SBB (screened bottom board), so some of the information has to be "translated" or just does not apply to a BackyardHive TBH, which has an end entrance, one falseback and a solid bottom board.

Whether you should use a side entrance (cold way) or an end entrance (warm way) is a personal choice. With a side entrance, air enters and blows between combs, whereas with an end entrance when air enters, it hits the face of the first comb and the rest of the hive is fairly insulated from the draft. So the type of entrance you should use really depends on your climate and how much ventilation your bees need. Same goes for the bottom board. We think the BackyardHive was designed with a solid bottom board to keep in heat during the Winter. Humidity is super-low in our sub-alpine desert environment, so keeping moisture in is probably another reason. We could easily drill holes into the side of our hive (especially now that it's empty) to create a side entrance, but it would've been nice if it had been built with a screened bottom and removable solid bottom. With a solid bottom, Varroa monitoring is going to have to be accomplished via a Sugar Shake, and we're not too excited about trying to get a few hundred bees into a jar with powdered sugar, shaking the heck out of them and seeing what falls off. You can be sure there'll be a post on that if we ever do it!

Book Review: Small Scale Beekeeping

by Curtis Gentry

If you don't have any books, this one might be a good one to have for a couple of reasons. First, it covers everything from what you need to know about bees, to actually using a Top Bar Hive. Second, it's free.

The book is actually a Peace Corps manual on keeping bees in tropical regions and, as you might expect, it leans towards simplicity and low-cost methods.

It is available as a PDF, but it's 220 pages long so make sure to have a fresh cartridge or ink tank in your printer! Download the file 32.771.pdf.

Not on our blogroll, because it's not strictly about beekeeping, but there's some really inspiring stuff at A Growing Sense. Written by an volunteer with the Peace Corps in The Gambia, just type "bees" in the search box and you'll find lots of interesting posts.

Book Review: Hive Management: A Seasonal Guide for Beekeepers

by Richard Bonney

Likes: no romance here; provides practical information on what should be happening from the beginning to end of the beekeeping season. In Colorado, that's February through September. Or October, depending on what la Niña has to say.

• the author strives to give an understanding of bee behavior, so the beekeeper can meet their needs
• explains what to look for during inspections, for example, brood pattern and why it matters
• gives reason for the various hive management tasks
• emphasis on respect for the bees – does not push prophylactic antibiotics
• This book's a really good Winter read for first year beekeepers entering their second year.

Dislikes: no photos.

Book Review: The Backyard Beekeeper

by Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine.

This is one of my favorite books - I refer to it often. Alas, it is of no help regarding nucs.

Likes: a comprehensive guide for beginners that addresses beekeeping from a natural perspective (IPM) as well as the traditional (chemical) approach.

• lots of photos that are actually useful, not just pretty
• encyclopedic yet easy-to-read
• love the asides
• step-by-step photos on installing a package (if you understand this, then installing a swarm is a snap)
  

Dislikes: the type is kinda small, and Jeanne's Hand Cream is not what's shown in the photo. Also, it looks like all the cosmetic products were made using bleached beeswax.

The author's inscription (to my girls): Keep the Honey Coming.

Book Review: The New Complete Guide to Beekeeping

by Roger Morse
"New" is a relative term. The 4th ed. was published 15 years ago. A bit dated, but worth borrowing from the library. Morse was the professor of apiculture at Cornell University, but the book is written for Langstroth-style beekeepers, nonetheless.
At one time, it was probably a classic must-have, eventhough it has only a few illustrations and black-and-white photos. More recent books (e.g.: The Backyard Beekeeper) displace this as a reference every beekeeper should have.

Book Review: Keeping Bees and Making Honey

by Alison Benjamin and Brian McAllum

Likes: a romantic guide for the aspiring beekeeper

• beautiful images (even has a photo of a top bar hive)
• a really good overview of the life of a honeybee (by caste)
• pictorial instructions for hiving a nuc (most books explain hiving a package, which is the most common way to populate a hive in the US)
• a list of bee-preferred plants
• descriptions of varietal honeys
  

Dislikes: the "Making Honey" portion of the book is very brief and somewhat vague. If you're going to make it part of the title, it seems to me that honey production should be given more than a page and a half. I'm not counting the section on gardening for bees.

The authors, who have just 2 years of beekeeping under their belts, basically say that knowing when to add supers is part of the art of beekeeping. They suggest that would be when the bees have begun drawing out the outermost frames of the brood box, and supering again when the previous one is half-full. Wait... does that make sense? As with most books, this one is written for Langstroth hive beekeepers. If you have a TBH, their supering scheme loosely translates to: make sure the bees always have two or three bars to work with between the last honey comb and the false back.