Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Fascination’
culver’s root

size: 2 litre pot available within 2-3 days £7.99 £5.99 Buy
pot size guide add to wish list

Position: full sun or partial shade
Soil: moderately fertile, moist, well-drained soil
Rate of growth: average
Flowering period: July to August
Flower colour: bluey-mauve
Hardiness: fully hardy

Self-supporting spires of bluey-mauve flowers from July to August above whorls of deep green leaves. The delicate, tubular flowers add vertical interest to the back of a border and associate well with prairie style planting. Best grown in a fertile, moist, well-drained soil in full sun or partial shade.

Garden care: Divide plants in spring. Apply a generous 5-7cm mulch of well-rotted garden compost or manure around the base of the plant in spring.
Eventual Height: 1.8m
Eventual Spread: 0.5m

Fantastic leaflet here about which plants are good for your bees.
So before you buy a new plant check that the bees will love it too!

Bee
Manual: The Complete Step-by-step Guide to Keeping Bees

This is one of the books I’ve got. It’s really detailed with tons of photos and diagrams explaining everything. The book is a really useful guide to everything you need to do to manage your bees. It’s easy to read and the pictures make it a perfect book for the beginner. It is well worth the money to start you off with a clear overview and detailed look at bee keeping.

Bill Turnbull, Claire Waring, Adrian Waring

RRP: £21.99
Price: £15.39
You Save: £6.60 (30%)

Guide
to Bees & Honey: The World’s Best Selling Guide to Beekeeping

This is a really indepth book for beekeepers.

Ted Hooper

RRP: £12.99
Price: £9.09
You Save: £3.90 (30%)

The
Bad Beekeepers Club: How I stumbled into the Curious World of Bees – and became
(perhaps) a Better Person

Bill Turnbull

RRP: £8.99
Price: £5.30
You Save: £3.69 (41%)

A
Practical Manual of Beekeeping: How to Keep Bees and Develop Your Full Potential
as an Apiarist

Some photos and diagrams. This is a much more wordy book than the haynes bee manual but it’s an interesting read and he’s a fascinating bee keeper!

David Cramp

RRP: £14.99
Price: £10.49
You Save: £4.50 (30%)

Get
Started In Beekeeping: Teach Yourself

Adrian Waring, Claire Waring

I think this one has to be next on my list. Another from Adrian and Claire.

RRP: £10.99
Price: £6.04
You Save: £4.95 (45%)

Suitable both for those just considering the prospect and those who are already
fascinated beekeepers, this guide to setting up, maintaining and maximising
bees in the back garden is an indispensable and readable bible of information
and practical advice. It covers everything from bee behaviour to what to do
with honey, and balances all the background context on bee biology with the
day-to-day and seasonal practicalities of running hives in any location, in
the country or the city, and for colonies of all sizes.

Bee
Keeping: Inspiration and Practical Advice for Would-be Smallholders (Country
Living)

Andrew Davies

RRP: £6.99
Price: £5.59
You Save: £1.40 (20%)

Keeping
Bees: A Complete Practical Guide

Paul Peacock

RRP: £12.99
Price: £9.09
You Save: £3.90 (30%)

The
Complete Step-by-step Book of Beekeeping: A Practical Guide to Beekeeping, from
Setting Up a Colony to Hive Management and Harvesting the Honey, Shown in Over
400 Photographs

David Cramp

RRP: £12.99
Price: £9.09
You Save: £3.90 (30%)

The British BeeKeepers Association has this great list of bee friendly plants

(right click file save as)

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

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.