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Beekeeping; Self sufficiencey

This is the second of my book reviews so I hope that you find this one interesting as well. This is a book written by Joanna Ryde and I have to say immediately, it is a very easy to read book.

When I am reading these books I am having to review through the eyes  of a complete beginner and therefore this book scores quite highly. I would recommend the book to people who are keen to get a good general grounding. As it is only 128 pages long and the print is quite large there is not a lot of room to go into too much detail, which as a complete beginner this is probably a blessing.

What I think the book does well is make you want to understand more. Having read a few books now they don’t really consider the fact finder and just bamboozle you with science which makes the subject quite daunting. However, this also needs to be considered if you want that little bit more information. It simply doesn’t go into detail and if you consider that Varroa, perhaps one of the most important issues to be aware of at the moment if you are considering keeping bees, doesn’t even get a complete page to itself.

One thing that needs to be said though, this book really makes you want to pursue the wonderful past time of beekeeping; it really talks about the delights and there is a fantastic section on what you can harvest and an even better section on recipes using honey! All in all a useful book for the complete beginner with no prior knowledge but don’t buy it if you know a little bit about the subject (unless you need honey recipes!)

Buy it here at Amazon

Each New Year a group of our closest friends get together to see in the New Year. These are often nice and sober occasions with idle chat and a promise that next year we will do the same again as we obviously haven’t got anything better to do! Quite the contrary really as I am sure you can imagine but then these are some of our closest friends and so it is usually great fun.

There is one recurring theme however that keeps coming back each year; aims for the year to come. Last year I made three aims and the first was to learn Italian. I failed miserably at this task! The second was to teach our son, Sebastian, to walk which I was most proud to achieve. He started to walk at about 13 months and is now running around to his hearts content causing myself and Jo much energy loss trying to keep up! The third was a rather absurd aim to make Heston Blumenthal’s Chilli Con Carne. This doesn’t sound much but if you realise it takes three days to make you may see the challenge. Read more about the account below. Read the rest of this entry »