Victory Gardens for Bees


Book Description

Who knew modern civilization may be brought down, not by plagues or war, but by bees? Or, more correctly, by no bees? This book investigates the growing problem of bee mortality and offers practical measures we can all take to help. In ecological terms, bees play a critical role in the survival of many plant communities and continuation of life on this planet. No pollination, no seeds. No seeds, no future. Now that bees are facing unprecedented levels of die-off caused by a toxic mixture of environmental stresses, a community-based effort is needed to make gardens, fields and landscapes healthy sanctuaries for bees. Just as citizens banded together to produce Victory Gardens to offset the perilous food shortages of World Wars I and II, now a similarly vital level of collective effort is needed to make our gardens into lifesaving shelters for these essential creatures. Planning a bee-friendly space can provide a beautiful and bountiful selection of edible crops, native plants and fragrant ornamentals, as well as herbs that have medicinal properties for both pollinators and people. With the help of ten inspiring garden plans and planting guides, Weidenhammer shows how bee-friendly plants can be used in creative combinations for plots and pots of all sizes, and are easily grown by novices and seasoned gardeners alike. In the spirit of the history-making Victory Gardens, readers will learn how to pack optimum benefits into a limited space for the survival of hive and home, and backyard beekeepers will learn great planting strategies for making sure their honeybees are healthy and have ample food to overwinter. Victory Gardens for Bees is also buzzing with DIY projects that will provide nesting sites and essential supplies for precious pollinators. With plenty of photographs to help readers identify bees of all stripes, beekeeping tips and other interesting bee-phemera, this book is a must-have for anyone who wants to do their part to save bees.




Beekeeping in Western Canada


Book Description

A comprehensive manual on all aspects of beekeeping, including bee physiology and biology, getting started, nectar and pollen plants, supplementary feeding, honey extraction and production, bee health and marketing. Includes illustrations and colour photographs.




A Beekeeper's Diary


Book Description

Do you want to be a beekeeper and need help on how to start? Charlotte Ekker Wiggins has written the definitive guide to beginning beekeeping. This diary will guide you on how to start, troubleshoot and successfully develop basic beekeeping skills and practices.The information in this easy to use guide, with handy check lists and tips, will answer your beginning beekeeping questions including: How to naturally feed your honey bees.Best beekeeping equipment. Where to set up your hives. How to get honey bees.How to manage pests and diseases.Plus much more! This diary continues to be used in Charlotte's beekeeping classes. It is approved for use with Great Plains Master Beekeeping Program classes.




The Pollinator Victory Garden


Book Description

The passion and urgency that inspired WWI and WWII Victory Gardens is needed today to meet another threat to our food supply and our environment—the steep decline of pollinators. The Pollinator Victory Garden offers practical solutions for winning the war against the demise of these essential animals. Pollinators are critical to our food supply and responsible for the pollination of the vast majority of all flowering plants on our planet. Pollinators include not just bees, but many different types of animals, including insects and mammals. Beetles, bats, birds, butterflies, moths, flies, and wasps can be pollinators. But, many pollinators are in trouble, and the reality is that most of our landscapes have little to offer them. Our residential and commercial landscapes are filled with vast green pollinator deserts, better known as lawns. These monotonous green expanses are ecological wastelands for bees and other pollinators. With The Pollinator Victory Garden, you can give pollinators a fighting chance. Learn how to transition your landscape into a pollinator haven by creating a habitat that includes pollinator nutrition, larval host plants for butterflies and moths, and areas for egg laying, nesting, sheltering, overwintering, resting, and warming. Find a wealth of information to support pollinators while improving the environment around you: • The importance of pollinators and the specific threats to their survival• How to provide food for pollinators using native perennials, trees, and shrubs that bloom in succession• Detailed profiles of the major pollinator types and how to attract and support each one• Tips for creating and growing a Pollinator Victory Garden, including site assessment, planning, and planting goals• Project ideas like pollinator islands, enriched landscape edges, revamped foundation plantings, meadowscapes, and other pollinator-friendly lawn alternatives The time is right for a new gardening movement. Every yard, community garden, rooftop, porch, patio, commercial, and municipal landscape can help to win the war against pollinator decline with The Pollinator Victory Garden.




Letters to a Beekeeper


Book Description

This the story of how, over the course of a year, Alys, the Guardian gardening writer, learns how to keep bees; and Steve, the urban beekeeper, learns how to plant a pollinator-friendly garden. Part beautifully designed coffee-table book, part manifesto, this collection of engaging letters, emails, texts, recipes, notes and glorious photos creates a record of the trials, tribulations, rewards and joys of working with, rather than against, nature. And along the way, you will pick up a wealth of advice, tips and ideas for growing food and keeping pollinators well fed. Letters to a Beekeeper is for lazy gardeners, novice beekeepers and everyone in between. It is the best rule-breaking, wildlife-friendly, guerilla, urban gardening, insect-identifying, honey-tasting, wax-dripping, epistolary how-to book you could ever hope to own.




The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping


Book Description

The buzz on beekeeping. The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Beekeeping has all the information a begin­ning beekeeper needs to know to start a hive and keep it buzzing. Expert beekeepers Dean Stiglitz and Laurie Herboldsheimer, owners of Golden Rule Honey, take readers step by step through the entire process-from information on the inhabitants of a hive and how it works to collecting bees, keeping them healthy, raising a queen, harvesting honey and wax, and stor­ing hives for the off-season.




QueenSpotting


Book Description

At the heart of every bee hive is a queen bee. Since her well-being is linked to the well-being of the entire colony, the ability to find her among the residents of the hive is an essential beekeeping skill. In QueenSpotting, experienced beekeeper and professional “swarm catcher” Hilary Kearney challenges readers to “spot the queen” with 48 fold-out visual puzzles — vivid up-close photos of the queen hidden among her many subjects. QueenSpotting celebrates the unique, fascinating life of the queen bee chronicles of royal hive happenings such as The Virgin Death Match, The Nuptual Flight — when the queen mates with a cloud of male drones high in the air — and the dramatic Exodus of the Swarm from the hive. Readers will thrill at Kearney’s adventures in capturing these swarms from the strange places they settle, including a Jet Ski, a couch, a speed boat, and an owl’s nesting box. Fascinating, fun, and instructive, backyard beekeepers and nature lovers alike will find reason to return to the pages again and again. This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG 2.0 Level AA.




Bad Beekeeping


Book Description

A million pounds of honey. Produced by a billion bees! This memoir reconstructs the life of a young man from Pennsylvania as he drops into the bald prairie badlands of southern Saskatchewan. He buys a honey ranch and keeps the bees that make the honey. But he also spends winters in Florida swamps, nurse-maid to ten thousand dainty queen bees. From the dusty Canadian prairie to the thick palmetto swamps of the American south, the reader meets with simple folks who shape the protagonist's character - including a Cree rancher with three sons playing NHL hockey, a Hutterite preacher who yearns to roam the globe, a reclusive bee-eating homesteader, and a grey-headed widow who grows grapefruit, plays a nasty game of scrabble, and lives with four vicious dogs. Encompassing a ten-year period, this true story evolves from the earnest inexperience of the young man as he learns an art and builds a business. Carefully researched natural biology runs counterpoint to human social activities. Bee craft serves as the setting for expositions that contrast American and Canadian lifestyles, while exemplifying the harsh reality of a man working with and against the physical environment.




The Anatomy of the Honey Bee


Book Description

“As a world authority on insect anatomy, Snodgrass has given us this book a brilliant account of the anatomy of the honey bee and how it relates to the way that bees develop and how and why they function as they do in their interesting communal life. This book should be in the library of every student of the honey bee and bee behaviour—beekeepers as well as scientists. The book is delightfully written and is enjoyable reading.”—American Bee Journal “This is not just a technical reference book on honey bee anatomy. It is far more, it is essentially a treatise on entomology, using one species as an example, and including a discussion of the fundamentals of embryology, development, and metamorphosis as well as anatomy. The subject of each chapter is approached from the broadest evolutionary point of view, and its horizon includes all the arthropods and beyond, so that the bee really typifies animal life in general. Finally, the language of the book is such that it can be read straight through with pleasure....It is a delight to follow the author through this complete examination of one insect: how it develops, how it grows, and how it operates.”—Entomological News