Product Description

For the professional and hobbyist, a detailed review of a full-year cycle of beekeeping, including managing colonies, taking the crop, coping with disease, and selecting equipment. The reader learns how to manage bees and keep them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112180 in Books
• Published on: 1993-01-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From the Back Cover
Whether you're a beginning beekeeper or one with a season or two of experience, Richard Bonney tells you how to keep bees, not just have them. This new book by the acclaimed author of Hive Management offers vital, up-to-date information about how to:

-- Acquire bees
-- Install a colony
-- Manage a hive
-- Take a crop of honey
-- Prevent and treat Varroa and tracheal mites
-- Learn about Africanized bees

About the Author
A beekeeper for over 13 years, author Richard E. Bonney owns Charlemont Apiaries in Charlemont, Massachusetts. He has authored two books, Hive Management and Beekeeping. Richard is a beekeeping teacher at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He was named the Massachusetts Extension Specialist-Apiculture in 1991 and writes regularly about beekeeping.

Customer Reviews

Good Beekeeper Book
This is a very good book and resource for the beginning beekeeper. When I start someting, I like to buy two books, since one will likely be garbage (you never want to be relying on a bad book for important info). I was glad I did in this case. I bought this book and one other to start beekeeping. I was glad I bought this one. It is well written and easy to understand.

A good book for information but needs to be updated
This is a good book to add to your collection but it is in need of an update!

Pretty good but a few issues
I've read "Beekeeping: A Practical Guide" from cover to cover and I enjoyed
reading it. The author has a kind of subdued humor that I particularly like
and the instructions on how to treat the hive seemed quite complete. In
fact using this book as a guide I installed three hives yesterday morning.

After that experience I realized that there were two things left out that the
author should have included. Perhaps if there's another edition he will
add them.

First, there needs to be an explanation of the consequences of being
stung and not flicking the stinger out. If one does not do this the stinger
will work its way down under the skin and become irretrievable. Then
that whole stinger becomes something the body reacts against. Bonney
accurately stated that for many people bee stings are no big deal and
at the same time asserted that one should immediately flick the stinger
out. All this is quite accurate. What was left out was an explanation
of the consequences though of not more or less immediately getting that
stinger out.

On the third hive I was stung multiple times and lost track of where
all the stings were. At the time the stings hurt a lot for a minute
or two and then faded to insignificance. Now almost twenty-four hours
later I know exactly where each stinger is that I failed to flick out.
And it has dawned on me that this painful reaction is going to persist
for many days.

Second, one step in installing a package of bees is the hanging of the
queen cage between two frames suspended by a metal disk that comes on
the queen cage. I was all prepared for that possibility. (I read and
reread Bonney's step-by-step instructions at least three times.) What
I wasn't prepared for was queen cages with plastic strap and without
a metal disk. Therefore I didn't have the proper tools to attach
the queen cage to a frame.

Now Richard Bonney had no way to anticipate this change of practice. But
what would have helped is an explanation of why it's so important to
suspend the queen at the top. Yesterday morning I didn't know what to
do and left the queen cages on the bottom of each of their respective
hive bodies. Now almost twenty-four hours later, I wake up realizing
that the queens might die because the worker bees aren't going to cluster
around the queen at the bottom of the cage to keep her warm.

It's still a good book. I recommend it.