best beekeeping books?

[hildare]

or websites?  recommend me some, y'all!  (and go ahead and tell me how your sweet bees are doing if you feel like it, too!)  <3

[Sundance_11]

  Listening...it's a topic I want to start learning about, but have not yet.

~Melanie

[Chicky2]

ROFLMAO.  Ask my swollen finger how my sweet bees are doing!  Apparently our bees are not happy having their pictures taken.  I recommend a subscription to the "American Bee Journal".

You can see we have a busy queen.  There's lots of brood in there.  We have also discovered some bees in one of our hives that are only about 2/3 the size of the other bees.  And no, we are not comparing workers to drones.  Me thinks our hive made a new queen and she mated w/a drone from our wild hive (which will go into a nice box in 2 wks--I'm preparing the frames for the wild honey comb tomorrow!). 

Oh, and for websites, I totally get off on watching some youtube beekeeping videos!

[hildare]

did it sting you through the glove?  yikes.  it is interesting that you have two strains in the same box!  (i'm still totally a n00b and know nothing, but i would have thought the original bees would kill the ones that are so different.) 

[Chicky2]

No, that was my dh's hand w/the gloves.  I don't have any good ones yet and was bare-handed, lol.  Serves me right, eh?  The bees won't kill the new mixed strain if their queen made them.  Now, if I took the bees from under the floor in our cabin in the woods, and managed to capture the queen and boxed them up and put them on top of one of the hives we already have, the bees would likely fight and also kill the 'new' queen.  If we box up the wild bees and put them w/out a queen on top of the existing hive, they may fight.  HOWEVER, if we box them up w/out a queen and put a single sheet of newspaper in between the old and new hive bodies, by the time the bees eat thru the paper they will have gotten used to one another and likely be fine and just combine forces.  The latter is what we'll do if we don't get the queen.  Cool, huh?  The newspaper serves as a barrier much as the "candy" in a queen bee cage does--when you requeen a hive you put the queen in the hive while she's still trapped inside a little box w/a hole in the side filled w/bee candy (powdered sugar and honey).  The bees eat the candy and free her.  By the time they do this they are used to her and won't kill her, most likely.

I HIGHLY recommend finding your local bee club.  Start attending those meetings now!  This is a great time of the year to start learning and I'd be willing to bet you'd find someone who will let you go look at their hives, or let you go along on a swarm catch.  We LOVE our bee club!  It's also a great way to save some $ on supplies.  Our club goes in together to buy nucs (bee packages), hives, etc.....

I recently scored 60 hive bodies from someone who had them just sitting in an airplane hangar.  I found out he just had them sitting around and schmoozed my way in there and talked him into selling them CHEAP.  I bought 40 on the first trip, sold 30 of them to members of my bee club, and then sold the rest on craigslist.  I made $500 profit in the blink of an eye, they were snatched up so fast!  In addition, I got us 14 hive bodies for free.  Went back last weekend and bought 10 more and then he gave us a pollen trap and 4 more empty hive bodies (no bottom or top or frames) for free.  Heck, he also gave me a fleece since they'd just sheared their sheep.  Too bad he won't let go of the remaining 20 he has 'cause I'd love to have 'em.  I'll keep working on him, lol, but he eventually wants to grow fields of lavender and have his bees out there. 

[GardenStream]

I've been reading The Barefoot Beekeeper. It's great for me because I'm doing top bar hives. I have also found a lot of good information from beesource beekeeping forums and biobees.

I only put the package into the hive 5 days ago so I'm learning as I go.