Reference information on beekeeping topics

Reference information

• The Apiary Calendar - what to do each month.
• Winter Preparations
• 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.
• What to do with your beeswax.
• 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

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​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 
• Bees:FoundInTranslationwww.beesfoundintranslation.org/ - Found in Translation articles from https://www.BeeCulture.com (please subscribe) by Jay Evans, USDA-ARS ([email protected]). 

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

Swarm management

• ​Bait Hives for Honey Bees by Tom Seeley
• An Apiary Guide to Swarm Control by Wally Shaw
• There Are Queen Cells In My Hive - What Should I Do? by Wally Shaw
• Simple Methods of Making Increase by Wally Shaw
• How To Catch a Swarm by Hillary Kearney
• Swarm Trapping and Bait Hives by Jason Bruns
• Videos
  • Swarm Control by University of Guelph Honey Bee Research Centre (video)
  • Swarming and How to Stop It by Kamon Reynolds (video)
  • Splitting Hives by University of Guelph Honey Bee Research Centre (video)
  • How To Split a Beehive Into Two Nucs and a Parent Colony by Norfolk Honey Company (video)
  • Making Splits Without Finding the Queen by Devan Rawn:
  • How To Split Bees by Bob Binnie
  • The Sustainable Apiary by Michael Palmer (National Honey Show)
  • 50 Years of the Sustainable Apiary - What Changed?  by Michael Palmer 
• Books
  • Honeybee Democracy by Tom Seeley

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
• The BeesWiki - a nice attempt to bring loads of bee information together.

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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
• National Honey Show - this contains the lectures for the annual show in the UK
• American videos: be careful with these since they have different bees, different hives, different climate, different weather, different flowers, different laws, etc. In particular,  many of our US friends are over the top and focus on gimmicky solutions (not all, of course!).
  • ​Kamon Reynolds in Tennessee - a commercial and very sensible beekeeper.
  • University of Guelph - Canadian University where Elton Dyce (of the Dyce Method for soft set honey) was Professor of Apiculture.
  • Also search for Michael Palmer who was recently here in Ireland
• ​A Look at Flower Pollination and the Significance of Bees - This contains some great information, including links to interesting details about pollination and fertilisation.
  

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. Also, the Open Library has many books - note that the download facility is on the left so it's not immediately apparent.
  • The ABC and XYZ of bee culture: A cyclopedia of everything pertaining to the care of the honey-bee: bees, hives, honey, implements, honey-plants, etc. Facts gleaned from the experience of thousands of bee-keepers, and afterward verified in our apiary. by A. I. Root and E. R. Root 
  • The Apiary; or bees, bee-hives and bee culture by Alfred Neighbor
  • 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
  • The Bee-keeper's Manual by Henry Taylor
  • Bee Keeping by Frank Benton
  • The Bee Preserver; or, Practical Directions for the Management and Preservation of Hives by Jonas de Gélieu
  • Bees by Everett Franklin Phillips
  • Bramble-Bees and Others by Jean-Henri Fabre
  • British Bees by William Edward Shuckard
  • The Children's Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck
  • A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive by William Augustus Munn
  • 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
  • Manual of the Apiary by Albert John Cook
  • ​A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees by John M. Weeks
  • The Mason-Bees by Jean-Henri Fabre
  • 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 
  • The Preparation of Bees for Outdoor Wintering by Everett Franklin Phillips and Geo. S. Demuth
  • A Profitable Instruction of the Perfite Ordering of Bees by Thomas Hill
  • Soft Candy for Bees by Burton N. Gates
  • Wild Bees, Wasps and Ants and Other Stinging Insects by Edward Saunders
  • Wintering Bees in Cellars by Everett Franklin Phillips and Geo. S. Demuth
  • archive.org/details/productivebeekee00pell/page/n5/mode/2upProductive bee-keeping; modern methods of production and marketing of honey by Frank C. Pellett
• 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​