Book Review

The first, Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping, was originally written as a college-level textbook and has a textbook-style organization, complete with discussion questions and suggested exercises at the end of each chapter. However, it is anything but a tedious read. It has hundreds of color photographs, line drawings, many explanatory charts, a very useful glossary, and overall a light, often amusing, writing style. What sets it apart from other beekeeping books is that it starts out with the biology of honey bees and only after that is thoroughly explained, does the beekeeping part of the text begin. In other words, you will understand the “why” before you are taught the “how” of the beekeeping skills. To my mind, this makes the sometimes-perplexing how-to descriptions of beekeeping techniques far easier to learn. I think this is such an effective approach that I have adopted it in my own teaching practice. Bees and their marvelous lives never fail to give me a good starting point for even the most mundane of how-to explanations. This book will be useful to any beekeeper beyond their first year. And it will have real staying-power over the years as your understanding and skills grow. I also found it very useful as a review tool when I was studying for my Master Beekeeper’s exam last year.

It was studying for the exam which brought me to Clarence Collison’s remarkable book, What Do You Know? The entire book is nothing but exam questions – thousands of them! Collison drew on his decades of writing the popular “Do You Know?” column in Bee Culture magazine. The questions (some true/false, some multiple choice, some fill-in-the blank) are grouped together by topic in separate chapters, so you will get a through beekeeping-knowledge work-out in each chapter. Every area of beekeeping gets its due: bee biology and anatomy, hive management techniques, disease diagnosis and pest-control, equipment, pollination, queen breeding, and honey and other products from the hive. It wasn’t the questions that I got right that were the most important to me. It was my wrong answers that were the most helpful. At the end of each chapter there is an answer key. And for most of the answers, these are not simple “got it wrong/got it right” answer keys. Most of them are accompanied by a very-readable explanation of why a particular answer was the correct one. So, every wrong answer provides a quick jolt of remedial education, right on the spot. Beekeepers wanting to assess the depth of their beekeeping knowledge will find this book a very useful tool, and often the answer key’s explanations are more memorable than the questions. The book’s all-question format makes it a fun book to own. It can be picked up at any time, opened to any page and instantly, you are engaged in matching wits with it.

Orono Maine

August 3rd-7th, 2020 | Save the date!!

EAS is headed north, again!

If you live in the Northeast and the travel to the recent Conferences has seemed too far (VA in 2018 and SC in 2019), you’re in luck because in 2020 the Conference will be in Orono, ME and then the following year, it will be at UMass in Amherst, MA. If you haven’t been to one before, this is your chance to experience the fantastic opportunities to learn more about bees from the best speakers, hang out with hundreds of other beekeepers, see the honey show, and visit the booths of all the beekeeping vendors. And maybe even consider taking the Master Beekeeping Exam. When you have a minute, please stop by our booth and say, “Hi”. We’d love to meet you in person.