Beekeeping for Gardeners: The complete step-by-step guide to keeping bees in your garden

Beekeeping for Gardeners: The complete step-by-step guide to keeping bees in your garden

by Richard Rickitt
Beekeeping for Gardeners: The complete step-by-step guide to keeping bees in your garden

Beekeeping for Gardeners: The complete step-by-step guide to keeping bees in your garden

by Richard Rickitt

Paperback

$26.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on August 6, 2024
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Store Pickup available after publication date.

Related collections and offers


Overview

A comprehensive gardener's guide to sustainable beekeeping.

Beekeeping has changed. While once it was a hobby that pursued the rich rewards of honey and wax, many new beekeepers now instead seek the gratification of knowing that they are aiding the survival of one of the world's most important creatures. Keeping bees today is as much about providing the right habitats and resources to help pollinators thrive as it is about chasing every drop of golden honey.

This beautifully illustrated guide to the ancient hobby of beekeeping shows today's gardeners how to create beautiful gardens that are richly rewarding for people and bees alike. Flowers, shrubs, trees and vegetable plots can provide colourful beauty and delicious produce as well as vital pollen and nectar when bees need it the most. There are lists of the top-performing plants and how and where to grow them, including window boxes, lawns, borders, wild gardens and even ponds.

Beekeeping for Gardeners looks at the pleasures and benefits of keeping honey bees in gardens of all types and sizes, both rural and urban. It explains the practicalities involved in keeping bees in the domestic garden setting, as well as on rooftops, allotments, parks, farmland and other locations. Importantly, and unlike any book before, this guide sets the delightful hobby of beekeeping within the context of the wider environment, asking how it can best serve the needs of all types of pollinator and the local ecology in general.

Whether you're looking to attract more bumblebees and solitary bees or want to install a beehive, this wonderful book contains all the guidance you'll need to have a garden buzzing with bees.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781399404846
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication date: 08/06/2024
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 7.50(w) x 9.70(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Richard Rickitt is an award-winning author and co-editor of BeeCraft, the UK's best-selling beekeeping magazine, read by beekeepers and entomologists around the world. He has been keeping bees for more than twenty years and keep hives for a number of commercial and private clients. Richard is beekeeper at Westonbirt, the National Arboretum, and he teaches beekeeping courses in the UK and abroad.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Keeping honey bees

Introducing the honey bee

Becoming a beekeeper

How to get started

Keeping bees

Handling bees

How to manage swarming

Queen and apiary management

The rewards of beekeeping

Caring for bees in winter

Health and hygiene

Part Two: Bees in your garden

Bumblebees

Solitary bees

Part Three: Gardens for bees

A world outside your back door

What to plant for bees

Lawns, meadows and wild areas

Ponds and damp gardens

Shrubs, hedges and trees

Garden and farm crops

The beekeeping year

The best garden plants for bees

Recommended further reading

Acknowledgements

Index

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews