Garden And Gardener

Everything for the Gardener and their Garden

Beekeeping

by Diane - July 6th, 2012.
Filed under: Bees.

A momentous occaision for me. I’ve just ordered my bee keeping outfit from Simon the Beekeeper

Many months ago my neighbour said she was interested in keeping bees. We have an allotment on the same site so I thought it sounded fun! The chair of our allotment association also said he’d like to too and they went to a beekeeping meeting at the local association.

A month later there was a meeting at a hive on a community site nearby. I thought I’d go along as I’d been getting more interested in bees and had been reading about them online. At this site we suited up and watched as someone dismantled the hive and explained what everything was. I was fascinated. I held several frames of bees and was entranced! It was amazing! Not scary at all!
I decided I’d be more interested in keeping bees too!

The next meeting is tonight so I’m going along to sign up as a member – which costs £23 a year and gets you insurance for keeping bees!

My neighbour has a hive, and we will need other items of equipment but we will get everything we need soon! There have been swarms offered – one wasn’t honey bees though and another was in a cavity which makes it very hard to get at.

This week the book I bought arrived – I picked – Bee Manual: The Complete Step-by-step Guide to Keeping Bees – as it is supposed to be really good for beginners! It’s got tons of pictures in which makes it easy to understand! Bee Manual: The Complete Step-by-step Guide to Keeping Bees

This book is at amazon and is £13.99
Bee Manual: The Complete Step-by-step Guide to Keeping Bees
The book has been written by two bee experts who’ve both been general secretary of the British Beekeepers Association and have years of experience between them.

The book is broken down into chapters which start off with Bees, The Equipment, Colony Management, Honey Harvest, Preparing for Winter, Pests and Diseases, and a summary of the Beekeeping year.

The book is packed with photos, diagrams and simple explanations of things.
The swarm prevention section is impressive with different techniques explained clearly using detailed descriptions and clear easy to follow pictures.