The Practical Beekeeper Volume I Beginning Beekeeping Naturally

Volume I Beginning 1 BLUF 3 Learn from the bees 3 Why this book? 6 Unsustainable beekeeping system 7 Beekeeping Pests 7 Shallow Gene Pool 7 Contamination 7 Wrong Gene Pool 8 Upset Ecology of the Bee Colony 8 Beekeeping House of Cards 9 How do we get a sustainable beekeeping system? 9 Stop Treating 9 Clean Wax 10 Natural Cell Size 10 Natural Food 11 Learning 12 Bee Basics 16 Life cycle of a bee 16 Queen 16 Queenlessness 17 Supersedure 18 Swarming 18 Worker 19 Drone 21 Yearly cycle of the colony 22 Products of the hive 24 Four Simple Steps to Healthy Bees 29 Comb 29 No Treatments 35 Breeding locally adapted queens 38 Natural Food 41 Choices 45 Beekeeping Philosophy 45 Important Decisions 47 Easy Things to Change in Beekeeping: 47 Difficult Things to Change in Beekeeping: 48 Choices I recommend 49 Frame depth 49 Number of Frames 50 Style of Frames and Cell Size of Foundation 51 Eight Frame Mediums 52 Plastic Small Cell Frames 53 If you don't like the idea of plastic 53 Bottom Board Feeders 54 Essential Equipment 54 Here are some essentials for the beekeeper: 54 Nice to Have Beekeeping Equipment: 56 Avoid Gadgets 57 Useful Gadgets 57 Getting Started 59 Recommended Beginning Beekeeping Sequence 59 How Many Hives? 60 Package or Nuc? 60 Race of Bees 61 More Sequence 61 Observation Hive 63 Nucleus Hive 63 Managing Growth 67 Starting With More Hives 67 Foundation and Frames 68 Brood foundation 68 Foundation for supers 69 Kinds of frames 70 Locating hives? 72 Installing Packages 76 Not to do: 76 Things to do: 84 How to install: 85 Enemies of the Bees 87 Traditional Enemies of Bees 87 Bears 87 Bees Robbing 87 Skunks 91 Opossums 91 Mice 91 Wax moths 92 Nosema 96 Stonebrood 100 Chalkbrood 101 European Foulbrood (EFB) 102 American Foulbrood (AFB) 103 Parafoulbrood 105 Sacbrood 105 Neighbors 107 Recent enemies 107 Varroa Mites 107 Tracheal Mites 114 Small Hive Beetles 116 Are treatments necessary? 117 Queen Spotting 119 Fallacies 125 Myth: Drones are bad. 125 Myth: Drone comb is bad. 125 Myth: Queen Cells are bad 126 Myth: Home grown queens are bad 126 Myth: Feral bees are bad 127 Myth: Feral swarms are disease ridden 128 Myth: Feeding can't hurt anything 128 Myth: Adding supers will prevent swarming. 128 Myth: Destroying queen cells will prevent swarming. 129 Myth: Swarm cells are always on the bottom. 129 Myth: Clipping the queen will prevent swarming. 129 Myth: 2 Feet or 2 miles 130 Myth: You have to extract 130 Myth: 16 pounds of honey = 1 pound of wax. 130 Myth: You can't raise honey and bees 131 Myth: Two queens can't coexist in the same hive. 131 Myth: Queens will never lay double eggs 131 Myth: If there is no brood there is no queen. 132 Myth: Bees only like to work up 132 Myth: A laying worker hive has one pseudo queen 133 Myth: Shaking out a laying worker hive works 133 Myth: Bees need a landing board. 134 Myth: Bees need a lot of ventilation. 134 Myth: Bees need beekeepers. 134 Myth: You have to requeen yearly. 135 Myth: A marginal colony should always be requeened. 135 Myth: You need to feed pollen substitute 135 Myth: You should feed syrup in the winter. 136 Myth: You can't mix plastic and wax. 136 Myth: Dead bees headfirst in cells have starved. 137 Realistic Expectations 138 Harvest 143 Frequently Asked Questions 154 Appendix to Volume I: Glossary 182 Appendix to Volume I: Acronyms 253