Оглавление
Howland Blackiston. Beekeeping For Dummies
Beekeeping For Dummies® To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Beekeeping For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box. Table of Contents
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
Guide
Pages
Foreword
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Taking Flight with Beekeeping
To Bee, or Not to Bee?
THE PREHISTORIC BEE
Discovering the Benefits of Beekeeping
Harvesting liquid gold: Honey
Bees as pollinators: Their vital role to our food supply
HONEYBEE OR HONEY BEE?
WHY BEES MAKE GREAT POLLINATORS
Being part of the bigger picture: Save the bees!
Getting an education: And passing it on!
BEE HUNTERS, GATHERERS, AND CULTIVATORS
Improving your health: Bee therapies and stress relief
BEE POLLEN, HONEY, AND ALLERGY RELIEF
Determining Your Beekeeping Potential
Environmental considerations
Zoning and legal restrictions
Costs and equipment
How many hives do you need?
What kind of honey bees should you raise?
KNOWING WHERE HONEY BEES COME FROM
Time and commitment
Beekeeper personality traits
Allergies
Deciding Which Beekeeping Approach to Follow
Medicated beekeeping
Natural beekeeping
Organic beekeeping
Combining approaches
Getting to Know Your Honey Bees
Basic Body Parts
Skeleton
Head
Thorax
Abdomen
The Amazing Language of Bees
Pheromones
Shall we dance?
Getting to Know the Male and the Two Female Castes
Her majesty, the queen
AMAZING “QUEEN SUBSTANCES”
The industrious little worker bee
House bees
Housekeeping (days 1 to 3)
Undertaking (days 3 to 16)
Working in the nursery (days 4 to 12)
Attending royalty (days 7 to 12)
Stocking the pantry (days 12 to 18)
Fanning (days 12 to 18)
ROYAL JELLY: THE FOOD OF ROYALTY
Becoming architects and master builders (days 12 to 35)
Guarding the home (days 18 to 21)
Field bees
The woeful drone
The Honey Bee Life Cycle
Egg
Larva
Pupa
Other Stinging Insects
Bumblebee
Carpenter bee
Mason bee
Wasp
Yellow jacket
Bald-faced hornet
Starting Your Adventure
Alleviating Apprehensions and Making Decisions
Overcoming Sting Phobia
Knowing what to do if you’re stung
Watching for allergic reactions
Building up a tolerance
Understanding Local Laws and Ordinances
Easing the Minds of Family and Neighbors
Location, Location, Location: Where to Keep Your Hives
Knowing what makes a perfect bee yard
Urban considerations
Dealing with nervous neighbors
City bees have the same needs as country bees
Deciding where to put your hives
Strike a deal with a community garden
Speak to your landlord about roof rights
Providing for your thirsty bees
HOW TO MOVE A FULL HIVE
Understanding the correlation between geographical area and honey flavors
Knowing When to Start Your Adventure
Selecting a Hive That’s Perfect for You
The Langstroth Hive
The Kenyan Top Bar Hive
The Apimaye Insulated Hive
The Flow Hive
The Warré (People’s) Hive
The Five-Frame Nuc Hive
The Observation Hive
Make a Beeline to the Best Beehive
Hives for harvesting honey
Hives for pollinating your garden
A hive for learning and teaching
THE SUN HIVE
Basic Equipment for Beekeepers
Starting Out with the Langstroth Hive
Knowing the Basic Woodenware Parts of the Langstroth Hive
Hive stand
Bottom board
Entrance reducer
Deep-hive body
FOR THE DO-IT-YOURSELFER
Queen excluder
Shallow or medium honey super
MAKING YOUR WOODENWARE LAST
Frames
A NEW KIND OF FRAME
Foundation
Inner cover
Outer cover
KNOWING THE RIGHT AND WRONG WAYS TO PUT THE INNER COVER ON THE HIVE
Knowing the Basic Parts of a Top Bar Hive
The top bar
Everything else
Ordering Hive Parts
Startup hive kits
ANTICIPATING THE LENGTH OF ASSEMBLY TIME
Setting up shop
Adding on Feeders
Hive-top feeder
Entrance feeder
Pail feeder
Baggie feeder
Frame feeder
Top Bar hive feeders
Fundamental Tools
Smoker
Hive tool and frame lifter
Bee-Proof Clothing
Veils
Gloves
Really Helpful Accessories
Elevated hive stand
Frame rest
Bee brush
Slatted rack
Screened bottom board
Beekeeper’s toolbox
Obtaining and Installing Your Bees
Determining the Kind of Bee You Want
Deciding How to Obtain Your Initial Bee Colony
Ordering package bees
Buying a “nuc” colony
Purchasing an established colony
Capturing a wild swarm of bees
Picking a Reputable Bee Supplier
DECIDING HOW MANY HIVES YOU WANT
Deciding When to Place Your Order
The Day Your Girls Arrive
Bringing home your bees
Recipe for sugar syrup
Putting Your Bees into the Hive
Hiving steps for Langstroth type hives and Steps 1–7 for Top Bar hives
Hiving Steps 8–14 for Top Bar hives
Watching your bees come and go from their new home
KNOWING WHEN AND HOW TO USE THE ENTRANCE REDUCER
Time for a Peek
Opening Your Hive
Establishing Visiting Hours
Setting an Inspection Schedule
Preparing to Visit Your Langstroth or Top Bar Hive
Making “non-scents” a part of personal hygiene
Getting dressed up and ready to go
Lighting Your Smoker
KEEPING YOUR SMOKER CLEAN
Opening a Langstroth Hive
WHAT DOES THE SMOKE DO?
Removing the hive-top feeder
Removing the inner cover
Opening a Top Bar Hive
The Hive’s Open! Now What?
What to Expect When You’re Inspecting
Keeping a Journal
KEEPING NOTES GOES VIRAL
Inspecting a Langstroth Hive
Removing the first frame of your Langstroth hive
Working your way through the Langstroth hive
Holding up frames for inspection
Knowing when it’s time for more smoke
Replacing Langstroth frames
Closing the Langstroth hive
Inspecting a Top Bar Hive
Working your way through the Top Bar hive
Top Bar comb management
Looking into Top Bar cells
Replacing the top bars and closing the hive
Understanding What to Always Look For
Checking for your queen
Storing food; raising brood
Inspecting the brood pattern
Recognizing foodstuffs
Your New Colony’s First Eight Weeks
Checking in: A week after hiving your bees
Verifying that the queen was released
Removing any burr comb
Looking for eggs
Replacing the missing frame of the Langstroth
Providing more syrup
The second and third weeks
Looking for larvae
Evaluating your queen
Hunting for capped brood
Looking for supersedure cells
Provide more syrup
Weeks four through eight
Adding a second deep-hive body to your Langstroth hive
Witnessing a miracle!
Watching for swarm cells
Providing more ventilation
Manipulating the frames of foundation
Making room for honey!
Inspecting your multilevel Langstroth hive
WHAT TO DO ABOUT PROPOLIS DURING INSPECTIONS
Different Seasons, Different Activities
Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer
Your summer to-do list
Your summertime commitment
Falling Leaves Point to Autumn Chores
Your autumn to-do list
Your autumn time commitment
AUTUMN SYRUP RECIPE
SUGAR FONDANT RECIPE
Clustering in a Winter Wonderland
Your winter to-do list
Your wintertime commitment
Spring Is in the Air (Starting Your Second Season)
Your spring to-do list
Your springtime commitment
Administering spring medication
Reversing hive bodies
Managing Top Bar Hives in the Spring
Finding the cluster
Preventing the urge to swarm
Expanding the brood nest
The Beekeeper’s Calendar
Common Problems and Simple Solutions
Anticipating and Preventing Potential Problems
Running Away (to Join the Circus?)
Swarming
WHAT’S THE BUZZ?
Understanding why you want to prevent swarming
Keeping the girls from leaving home
They swarmed anyway. Now what?
Capturing a swarm
Hiving your swarm
Absconding
Where Did the Queen Go?
Letting nature take its course
Ordering a replacement queen
Introducing a new queen to the hive
Avoiding Chilled Brood
Dealing with the Dreaded Robbing Frenzies
Knowing the difference between normal and abnormal (robbing) behavior
Putting a stop to a robbing attack
Preventing robbing in the first place
Ridding Your Hive of the Laying Worker Phenomenon
How to know if you have laying workers
Getting rid of laying workers
Preventing Pesticide Poisoning
The “Killer Bee” Phenomenon
A “BEE” MOVIE
What are “killer bees”?
Bee prepared!
AN EXPERIMENT THAT FLOPPED
Colony Collapse Disorder
What Is CCD?
What to Do If You Suspect CCD
Why All the Fuss?
What’s Causing CCD?
The cellphone theory
It may be the perfect storm
Parasites
Pathogens
Pesticides
Poor nutrition
Other possibilities
Answers to FAQs
What You Can Do to Help
WHAT IS IPM?
Keeping Your Bees Healthy
Understanding the Importance of Good Nutrition
What bees eat
The need for good gut health
Taking steps to ensure good nutrition
Medicating or Not?
Knowing the Big-Six Bee Diseases
American foulbrood (AFB)
NEW MEDICATIONS ON THE HORIZON
European foulbrood (EFB)
Chalkbrood
Sacbrood
Stonebrood
HONEY-BEE VIRUSES
Nosema
Nosema apis
Nosema ceranae
A handy chart
Heading Off Honey-Bee Pests
Parasitic Problems
Varroa mites
Recognizing varroa mite symptoms
Using detection techniques for varroa
POWDERED-SUGAR-SHAKE METHOD
DRONE-BROOD-INSPECTION METHOD
SCREENED-BOTTOM-BOARD METHOD
Knowing how to control varroa mite problems
GO AU NATUREL
SYNTHETIC CHEMICAL OPTIONS
Tracheal mites
Symptoms that may indicate tracheal mites
How to control tracheal mite problems
Natural source options
SUGAR-AND-GREASE PATTIES
MENTHOL CRYSTALS
Synthetic chemical options
Zombie (Phonid) flies
Other Unwelcome Pests
Wax moths
Small hive beetle
Determining whether you have a small hive beetle problem
SMALL HIVE BEETLE TRAPS
How to control the small hive beetle
Ants, ants, and more ants
Bear alert!
Raccoons and skunks
Keeping out Mrs. Mouse
Some birds have a taste for bees
Pest Control at a Glance
Raising Your Own Queens
Why Raising Queens Is the Bee’s Knees
Understanding Genetics
Dominant and recessive genes
Inbreeding versus outcrossing
Accentuate the positive
What Makes a Queen a Queen
Talking about the Birds and Bees for Honey Bees
Creating Demand: Making a Queenless Nuc
Queen-Rearing Method 1: Go with the Flow
If the queen cells are capped
If the queen cells are open
Mind the timeline
Queen-Rearing Method 2: The Miller Method
Queen-Rearing Method 3: The Doolittle Method, also Known as Grafting
Tools and equipment
How it’s done
Providing nuptial housing
Finding Homes for Your Queens
Evaluating the Results
The Queen Rearer’s Calendar
Marking Your Queens
Sweet Rewards
Honey, I Love You
Appreciating the History of Honey
Understanding the Composition of Honey
Healing with Honey
Honey and diabetes
Honey’s nutritional value
Honey and children
Choosing Extracted, Comb, Chunk, or Whipped Honey
Extracted honey
Comb honey
Chunk honey
Whipped honey
Honeydew honey
Taking the Terror out of Terroir
Customizing your honey
Honey from around the world
The Commercialization of Honey
Is it the real deal?
Raw versus regular honey
Organic or not?
Your own honey is the best
Appreciating the Culinary Side of Honey
The nose knows
Practice makes perfect
Recognizing defects in honey
Pairing Honey with Food
Infusing Honey with Flavors
Judging Honey
Honey Trivia
Getting Ready for the Golden Harvest
Having Realistic Expectations
What Flavor Do You Want?
Assembling the Right Equipment to Extract Honey
Honey extractors
Uncapping knife
Honey strainer
Other handy gadgets for extracting honey
Double uncapping tank
Uncapping fork or roller
Bottling bucket
Solar wax melter
Honey containers
Planning Your Extracted Honey Harvest Setup
Gathering Comb Honey Equipment
Section comb cartridges
Cut comb
Branding and Selling Your Honey
Creating an attractive label
Finding places to market your honey
Selling your honey on the web
Honey Harvest Day
Knowing When to Harvest
Bad things come to those who wait!
A few pointers to keep in mind when harvesting liquid gold
Getting the Bees out of the Honey Supers
Shakin’ ’em out
Blowin’ ’em out
Using a bee escape board
Fume board and bee repellent
YOU CAN STORE YOUR FRAMES OF HONEY (BRIEFLY) BEFORE EXTRACTING
Honey Extraction from a Langstroth Frame
Harvesting honey using an extractor
Cleaning frames after extracting
TWO COMMON HONEY-EXTRACTION QUESTIONS
Harvesting Honey from Your Top Bar Hive
Selecting the comb to harvest
Getting the bees off Top Bar comb
Harvesting using the crush-and-strain method
Harvesting honey using a honey press
Harvesting cut-comb honey
Harvesting Wax
The Part of Tens
More than Ten Fun Things to Do with Bees
Making Two Langstroth Hives from One
Making One Langstroth Hive from Two
Dividing a Top Bar Hive into Two Colonies
Combining Two Top Bar Hive Colonies
Building an Elevated Hive Stand
Building materials list
Cut list
Planting Flowers for Your Bees
Asters (aster/callistephus)
Bachelor’s buttons (Centaurea)
Bee balm (Monarda)
Hyssop (Agastache)
Malva (Malvaceae)
Mint (Mentha)
Nasturtium (Tropaeolum minus)
Poppy (Papaver/Eschscholzia)
Salvia (Salvia/farinacea-strata/ splendens/officinalis)
Sunflowers (Helianthus/Tithonia)
Brewing Mead: The Nectar of the Gods
Create Cool Stuff with Propolis
Propolis tincture
Propolis ointment
Propolis varnish
Making Gifts from Beeswax
Beeswax candles
Dipped candles
Molded candles
Beeswax furniture polish
Beauty and the Bees
Use your cappings
Equipment
The recipes
Ultra-rich skin cream
Rich body balm
Beeswax lip balm
Beeswax and olive oil salve
Beeswax lotion bar
Natural bug repellent bar
Natural homemade sunscreen
Natural deodorant
Packaging and labeling
More than Ten Frequently Asked Questions about Bee Behavior
Help! A million bees are clustered on the front of my hive. They’ve been there all day and all night. Are they getting ready to swarm?
Is something wrong with my bees? They’re standing at the entrance of the hive, and it looks like they’re just rocking back and forth. Are they sick?
I hived a new package of bees last week. I just looked in the hive. The queen isn’t in her cage, and I don’t see her or any eggs. Should I order a new queen?
Why is my queen laying more than one egg in each cell? Is she just super productive?
Hundreds of bees are around my neighbor’s swimming pool and birdbath. The bees are creating a problem, and the neighbor is blaming me. What can I do?
A tremendous amount of activity is present at the entrance of the hive. It looks like an explosion of bees flying in and out of the hive. The bees seem to be wrestling with each other and tumbling onto the ground. They appear to be fighting with each other. What’s going on?
My bees had been so sweet and gentle, but now I’m scared to visit the hive. They have become unbearably aggressive. What can I do?
I see white spots on the undersides of my bees. I’m worried these might be mites or some kind of disease. What are these white flecks?
The bees have carried dead larvae out of the hive and dumped them in and around the entrance of the hive. What’s going on?
It’s midwinter, and I see quite a few dead bees on the ground at the hive’s entrance. Is this normal?
I see some bees with shriveled wings and very short, stubby abdomens. Are these just baby bees?
Since my Top Bar hive is a more “natural” way to keep bees, can I skip the monitoring and treatment for mites and other diseases?
Is my Top Bar hive legal?
Because Top Bar hives were developed for use in Africa, will my Top Bar colony do okay in a colder climate?
My Ten Favorite Honey Recipes
Appendixes
Helpful Resources
Honey Bee Information Websites
Apiservices — Virtual beekeeping gallery
The Barefoot Beekeeper
Beemaster Forum
Bee-Source.com
Facebook — Top Bar Beekeeping
Honey Bee Health Coalition
Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium (MAARAC)
National Honey Board
Bee Organizations and Conferences
The American Apitherapy Society Inc
American Beekeeping Federation
American Honey Producers
Apiary Inspectors of America
Apimondia: International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations
Eastern Apiculture Society
Heartland Apicultural Society Inc
International Bee Research Association
USDA Agricultural Research Service
The Western Apiculture Society
Bee Journals and Magazines
American Bee Journal
Bee Culture
Bee World
Beekeeping Supplies and Equipment
Apimaye Insulated Hives
Barnyard Bees
Bastin Bees
Bee-commerce.com
BeeInventive
Bee Vital
Betterbee
Blue Sky Bee Supply
Dadant & Sons, Inc
Glorybee Inc
Healthy Bees, LLC
Hive Butler
Hive Tracks
Hungry Bear Farms
Kelley Beekeeping
Mann Lake
Miller Bee Supply
Oliverez
Pierco
Pigeon Mountain Trading Company
Rossman Apiaries
Sacramento Beekeeping Supplies
Swienty Beekeeping Equipment (EU)
Thorne Beekeeping Supply (UK)
Western Bee Supplies
State Bee Inspectors (United States)
Beekeeper’s Checklist
Glossary
Index. A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z
About the Author
Dedication
Author’s Acknowledgments
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
