Reference information on beekeeping topics

Reference information

• The Apiary Calendar - what to do each month.
• Why and how to keep hive records.
• All about Queen Rearing.
• Looking after your bees - ​Bee Health.
• Dave Cushman's encyclopedic web site - possibly the most information about bees available in one spot.
• Beespoke.info - an Irish site with a huge amount of useful information.
• Risk assessment: here's a template to help, and here are a couple of examples.
• Standard operating procedures:
  1. Hive inspections.
  2. Dividing a colony.

Beekeeping associations

• Federation of Irish Beekeepers Associations (FIBKA)
• Native Irish Honey Bee Society (NIHBS)
• The County Dublin Beekeepers Association
• Armagh and Monaghan Beekeepers' Association
• Ulster Beekeepers Association
• The British Beekeepers Association
• Welsh Beekeepers Association
• Scottish Beekeepers Association

​Bee Journals & Organisations

• Galtee Bee Breeding Group
• Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders Association (BIBBA)
• BeeCraft 
• Bees for Development 
• Bees Abroad 
• International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology (IJEST) 
• International Bee Research Association (IBRA) 
• The Beekeepers Quarterly 

Government

• Ireland: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine - Beekeeping and Honey
• Heath Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) -  approved treatments
• UK: National Bee Unit - BeeBase

Beekeeping Supplies:

• Irish Bee Supplies (local supplier based near Ardee, Co. Louth - Map)
• Bee Supplies (Dublin)
• Dingle Beekeeping Supplies (Kerry)
• MacEoin Honey (Cork)
• Donegal Bees (Donegal)
• Mill Lane Beekeeping (Leitrim)
• Thornes (UK)

Environment

• Biodiversity Ireland - register your sightings of wildlife here
• All-Ireland Pollinator Plan - for gardens, schools, churches, farms, business, councils, rail & motorways, communities
• Ava's Flowers
• Flower Fragrances That Attract Bees and Butterflies to Your Garden
• Bees and Honey: Creating Pollinator Gardens - Good general advice for helping pollinators, although please don't put out sugar water!
• How Gardeners Can Help Prevent the Bee Apocalypse - More general gardening advice

Miscellaneous

• UK-based Beekeeping forum
• All About Bees - Collection of Melittology Resources
• Beekeeping facts for kids
• More kids information: All About Bees by HalloweenCostumes.com

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Online Videos

• FIBKA - the Federation of Irish Beekeepers' Associations
• BIBBA - Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders Association BIBBA
• The Norfolk Honey Company - a great UK source of information
• Gwenyn Gruffydd - a beekeeper from Wales
• Black Mountain Honey - another Welsh beekeeper
• Keith Pierce - a Dublin beekeeper

Online Books

• The Internet Archive - search for any bee-related topic and you can find all sorts of information. For example, click on "text" to limit the search to books & search for Bees.  You can also search for magazines, e.g. the American Bee Journal.
• Project Gutenberg, the website that publishes books that are out of copyright, have a huge selection of eBooks available in all the common formats. Below is a list of those I found when I searched for bee-related books, and I'm sure there are others. Note that these are the English books - there are also many in French, German, Dutch, etc.
  • A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive by William Augustus Munn
  • A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees by John M. Weeks
  • A Profitable Instruction of the Perfite Ordering of Bees by Thomas Hill
  • Apis Mellifica; or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent  by C. W. Wolf
  • Bee Hunting: A Book of Valuable Information for Bee Hunters by John Ready Lockard
  • Bee Keeping by Frank Benton
  • Bees by Everett Franklin Phillips
  • Bramble-Bees and Others by Jean-Henri Fabre
  • British Bees by William Edward Shuckard
  • Humanity to Honey-Bees by Thomas Nutt
  • Improved Queen-Rearing; or, How to Rear Large, Prolific, Long-Lived Queen Bees by Henry Alley
  • The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck
  • Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee: A Bee Keeper's Manual by L. L. Langstroth
  • Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained by M. Quinby
  • New observations on the natural history of bees by François Huber
  • Nuova; or, The New Bee  (fictional account of a bee) by Vernon L. Kellogg 
  • Soft Candy for Bees by Burton N. Gates
  • The Bee-keeper's Manual by Henry Taylor
  • The Children's Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck
  • The Mason-Bees by Jean-Henri Fabre
  • The Preparation of Bees for Outdoor Wintering by Everett Franklin Phillips and Geo. S. Demuth
  • Wild Bees, Wasps and Ants and Other Stinging Insects by Edward Saunders
  • Wintering Bees in Cellars by Everett Franklin Phillips and Geo. S. Demuth
• The Anatomy of the Honey Bee (PDF) by R.E. Snodgrass - this is apparently out of copyright so it can be downloaded from the USDA
• Bee-Craft articles, digital library, and beginners series by month​