annieb123's Review of First Time Beekeeping (First Time)

by Kim Flottum

This indispensable beekeeping reference-packed with helpful diagrams, color photos, and easy-to-follow yet thorough instruction-gently guides you through setting up and caring for your first colonies.

Are you an absolute beginner when it comes to keeping bees? With First Time Beekeeping, help is at hand. Featuring the sage advice of Bee Culture editor emeritus and best-selling author of The Backyard Beekeeper Kim Flottum, this is your step-by-step guide to healthy, happy, and productive hives.

This complete resource features expert beginner advice for:

Setting up and caring for your own colonies
Selecting the best location to place your new bee colonies for their safety and yours
The most practical and nontoxic ways to care for your bees
Harvesting the products of a beehive and collecting and using honey
Bee problems and treatments

By following this advice, your colony or two of honey bees can pollinate the vegetables in your garden; produce wonderful honey and other beneficial products; and help your local ecosystem thrive. What could be sweeter?

Each book in the First Time series distills how-to guidance and advice from an expert on a specific topic into targeted step-by-step instruction geared toward the absolute beginner.

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

First Time Beekeeping is a reformat and re-release tutorial instruction guide for the people who want to get started with bees. Originally published in unabridged form in 2010, this edition is due out 11th Aug 2020 from Quarto on their Quarry imprint. It's 128 pages and will be available in paperback format.

This is a compact, well written, accessible guide to sourcing, choosing, and succeeding with beekeeping as a hobby. This guide presupposes no prior experience and covers all the basics including equipment, siting, getting started, and bees themselves. For a short(ish) book, it's quite comprehensive and will definitely provide enough good factual information to help new keepers avoid the most common mistakes. Sidebars throughout highlight important information keeping it easier to find. The photography throughout is clear and easy to follow. There's a good chapter on how-to perform the tasks necessary to keep bees healthy and (hopefully) happy and includes troubleshooting information on controlling diseases, inspections, and fall/winter management of the hives.

The book also includes a resource links list as well as a cross referenced index.

This would make a good selection for the smallholder's library or for anyone information-gathering before making the commitment to start beekeeping. I've been keeping bees off and on for 50+ years (I learned at my grandfather's side), and I still *strongly* recommend getting a mentor and finding like minded beekeepers to get off to a good start, but this book will definitely fill a gap and provide enough information to at least get started with beekeeping.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

First Time Beekeeping (First Time)

by Kim Flottum

Reviewed by annieb123 on Jul 22, 2020

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