My Review: Beginning Beekeeping- Everything You Need to Make Your Hive Thrive

Title: Beginning Beekeeping: Everything You Need to Make Your Hive Thrive!

Author: Tanya Phillips

Publication Date: March 14, 2017

Publisher: Alpha

Language: English

Format: Available in both Paperback and Kindle formats

Dimensions: 7.69 x 0.5 x 9.25 inches

Page Count: 192 pages

About the Book:

“Beginning Beekeeping: Everything You Need to Make Your Hive Thrive!” is a comprehensive guide for anyone interested in embarking on the journey of beekeeping. Authored by Tanya Phillips, this book is a treasure trove of practical information and expert advice.

Content Overview:

The book is divided into several sections, each focusing on a different aspect of beekeeping. It starts with the basics, explaining how a hive works and providing guidance on how and where to set up hives for maximum success. It then delves into the process of buying and installing bees and offers advice on feeding bees.

Dealing with Pests and Diseases:

A significant part of the book is dedicated to dealing with common hive pests and diseases. It provides effective treatment recommendations for issues such as mites, foulbrood, and colony collapse disorder (CCD). The book offers guidance for both conventional and organic treatments, making it a versatile resource for all beekeepers.

Hive Management:

The book also provides tips for dealing with common hive issues such as swarming, robbing, and absconding. It offers guidance for managing aggressive hives and tips for keeping a queenright colony. These insights are invaluable for maintaining a healthy and productive hive.

Harvesting and Processing:

“Beginning Beekeeping” includes instructions for enjoying rich, bountiful honey harvests. It provides detailed steps for processing and storing the honey and wax from your hives. The book also guides readers on how to make products from their harvest, adding an extra layer of value to their beekeeping efforts.

Seasonal Guidance:

The book provides seasonal guidance to ensure your hives return healthy and strong each year. This advice helps beekeepers plan their activities and interventions according to the time of year, ensuring the well-being of their bees and the productivity of their hives.

“Beginning Beekeeping: Everything You Need to Make Your Hive Thrive!” is more than just a guide; it’s a comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the rewarding practice of beekeeping. Whether you’re an urban dweller with a single hive or a rural beekeeper with a buzzing apiary, this book has something to offer you.

My Opinion

Getting on to more specific books, this one is solely for beginners and is mainly concerned with the business of setting up a new colony from scratch. Right off the bat, one notices that this is a book that knows its readership. Dense explication and theory (often all but necessary for more experienced beekeepers) here give way to a real emphasis on visuality and the simple “step” based procedures.

That said, this guide does give ample space to beekeeping problems and pests and diseases. There is no pretense that beekeeping is a simple matter of the right equipment followed by a series of steps. There are many problems that can arise even at the most basic level of beekeeping and this book provides beginner beekeepers with the knowledge they require to spot and deal with these.

Naturally, however, the limitations of this book are related most often to it being aimed at absolute beginners. While this might be excusable, there is one rather glaring omission that is less so. This book provides precisely no information on how to make, store, and feed with sugar syrup with which newly installed bees often require to get started. This is certainly a mark against the book – or at least the feeding section.

With this one oversight set aside though, this is a book that will cover the basics across all the major areas of beekeeping – basics, colony management, feeding, harvesting, and troubleshooting. It is an excellent book to start off with.

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