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Recently I wrote a short blog article about Presents to give a Beekeeper and in that piece I wrote a small section about beekeeping books I would recommend. Though I had only received it a few days previously, an excellent beekeeping book review in the BBKA news and my initial impressions as I felt it and looked through it, meant that it had to be included in my recommendations for great books for beekeepers.

As with other Beekeeping Book Reviews let me just give you the fundamentals of this book. It is written by a passionate beekeeper and professional photographer, David Wootton. You can find his Photography website here. Therefore, as you can imagine being a photographer, the images throughout this 146 page book are by far the best photos you will see in a Beekeeping Book.In fact, the images throughout this beekeeping book review have been reproduced with David’s permission so I hope you like them.

I have always been a little bit critical of the beekeeping literature out there for beginners as I often feel it is a little bit complicated and detailed for the humble beginner. There is after all a tremendous amount of information to obtain and understand in order try to be a responsible beekeeper (I refrain from using the word good here!) and so I remember really struggling when trying to read around the topic when I was attending my beginner courses.

I often found beekeeping books to be quite aesthetically boring and used quite complicated terminology. There were and are obviously good and detailed books but I felt something was lacking. This wasn’t just at the level pitched but also at the language used. A lot of the beekeeping books were written in the 3rd person and almost textbook like which always felt rather impersonal.

I think that is why I really enjoyed reading David’s book and to use his own words

This book is not an expert’s view on how to keep bees; there are plenty of those. It is an aid to discovering the pleasure of how to keep bees as a hobby

I think this absolutely encapsulates this beekeeping book and it is very readable and pitched at the right level. Though it is a fantastic book for the beginner or those who have survived the first few years (there are great chapters on the 2nd and 3rd year which I found particularly interesting) I would also say that experience beekeepers would enjoy if simply for the photography alone.

Perhaps my only critical point was a single page (yes; that tells you how much I enjoyed it) about bumble bees. David states there are only 30 species here in the UK. In fact there are over 250 species of solitary bee (and bumble bees are obviously not solitary) in the UK alone and a very vital area of the art of pollination (consider a Mason Bee is 100 times more prolific at pollinating than a honeybee and it shows you) – I think it was great to include and perhaps if he prints a 3rd edition he may expand on solitary and bumble bees and they are much misunderstood – having talked to David about this it appears it was information sourced from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust so I would have thought they could have given him better information than that but there you go.

I particularly liked the Hints and Tips sections set out amongst the more detailed text in this beekeeping book and the feel of it being a personal account. Both gave the book a slight informality which was nice when you compare its competition.

Below you will see a breakdown of the chapters that David covers in his beekeeping book:

1. Getting Started – Don’t be afraid to ask
2. The Hive – Part by part
3. Constructing a National Hive -It’s not difficult
4. Making up Frames of Foundation – It gets easier the more you make up
5. Equipment – Buy it as you need it
6. Bees – Its a hard life being a honey bee
7. Where to place you Hive – don’t upset the neighbours
8. Getting and Transferring Your Bees – Where to get them
9. Opening the Hive – Your first inspection
10. Feeding Bees – If you take their honey you have to return something
11. Subsequent Inspections – adding supers
12. Wintering Your Bees – Give them a little help
13. Collecting Swarms – A free colony
14. Your Second Year – The Spring Clean
15. Swarm Prevention – In your second season splitting your hive
16. Extracting Honey – the sticky but sumptuous bit
17. Honey – Jars, Chunk or Comb
18. A Beekeepers year – Things to remember to do
19. Glossary
20. Pollen Colour guide
21. The End – If you’ve got to this stage – congratulations you’re a beekeeper!
22. Website links

I particularly enjoyed the early chapters of this beekeeping book about building the hives as that is certainly something I could have done with when starting out. The pictures really add to an understand on how it gets put together. Other chapters I felt particularly good were the sections about Collecting Swarms and The Beekeepers year. The latter I will need to constantly refer to as time gets on.

Should you be interested in buying this beekeeping book you can purchase it directly from David’s website here, it is priced £16.99 excluding postage. If you want to you can also find David’s page on Facebook here.