Pocket Nature: Beekeeping: Explore the Marvelous World of Honeybees

By Ariel Silva

Step into the remarkable world of the honeybee in this illuminating and delightfully illustrated pocket guide.

For budding apiarists, this introductory book offers fascinating information about honeybees and everything you need to know to begin your own beekeeping journey. For example, did you know that from birth, female bees are promoted through roles such as nurse, baker, and guardian of the hive? Or that male bees’ primary purpose is simply to mate with a queen, but only 0.1% of them ever will?

In these pages, you’ll discover the inner workings of the beehive, the properties of honey, the basics of keeping bees, and the joys that come from this meditative hobby, including a thriving garden, environmental stewardship, and a supportive community (not to mention delicious honey!). A whole world awaits—and it’s just outside your door.

FOR BEEKEEPERS AND BEE ENTHUSIASTS: This petite and brightly colored book will appeal to anyone interested in bees and beekeeping, whether they’re just starting their journey or well on their way. Don’t let the size fool you—this compact bee book is packed with insightful information and helpful tips for novices and experts alike.

WHY BEES MATTER: We need bees. According to Greenpeace, bees are responsible for one in every three bites of food humans consume. Without them, Earth, and our daily existence, wouldn’t be the same. The active Save the Bees movement that has erupted in recent years shows that people are adamant about bee justice and committed to spreading awareness and knowledge about bees. This pocket guide is a practical and inspiring addition to the cause.

HIGHLY GIFTABLE NATURE BOOK: Filled with appealing illustrations, calming meditations, and tidbits about honeybees that will make your jaw drop, this is a lovely gift for bee lovers, nature enthusiasts, and others who want to learn more about these incredible specimens. Pair with jars of honey or other books in the Pocket Nature series to delight a friend, colleague, parent, or sibling—anyone who loves learning about our amazing natural world.

Perfect for:

• Bee enthusiasts, apiarists, and beginner beekeepers
• Nature lovers and hikers
• Mindfulness practitioners
• Followers of @bowserbee on TikTok
• Birthday, anniversary, housewarming, or seasonal gift for nature lovers

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: Mar 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781797224848

Ariel Silva

Ariel Silva began keeping bees in 2012 after moving onto a hundred-year-old farmstead. He sells his delicious linden honey online and teaches people all over the world about the joys of beekeeping and the importance of pollinators through his popular TikTok account @bowserbee. Silva and his apiary are located in northern Illinois.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

As children, our minds seem to intuitively wonder at the natural world around us. When I was young, I would often lie in the grass on warm days, with my back toward the sky and my chin resting on folded arms, my eyes intently searching the crisscrossing blades of grass to see what I could find. I would marvel, wide-eyed and amazed, at the miniature world that existed there, full of movement and life. I observed the robotic movements of scurrying ants; caterpillars inching along, utilizing every muscle to propel themselves forward; ladybugs sensing their surroundings with their legs and antennae; spiders building their intricate webs; honeybees meticulously crawling over each individual segment of a clover flower; and bumblebees lazily meandering from bloom to bloom, as if suspended from the end of a string. I would quickly get lost in my thoughts, and my mind would fill with questions about this world. How could something as small as a honeybee seem to fly so fast, and where did it go when the day was done? What was the world like inside a beehive or ant mound? Did all these bugs know how to talk to each other?

As I grew older, I slowly forgot about this world. It was as if the few extra feet I grew took me just far enough away from this earthly realm to stop noticing it entirely. In reality, it was life’s obligations that distracted me. This amazing natural world continued to exist, in all its wonder, just outside of my awareness.

In my early twenties, I left the familiarity of the city I grew up in for an old farmhouse in the countryside. My whole world changed. I moved into a one-hundred-year-old house surrounded by an ancient forest and bordered by fencerows full of native wildflowers and grasses. In contrast to the noisy mornings in the city with garbage trucks, sirens, buses, and construction work, my early spring mornings were suddenly filled with the sounds of songbirds announcing the sunrise. As I began sleeping with the windows open to catch the cool summer-night air, I became acutely aware of the night sounds of nature—the rustling of leaves, the songs of crickets and katydids living out their short lives high up in the trees. And on some nights, I experienced moments of absolute silence, where the world was so quiet, I could hear the sound of blood pulsing in my ears.

Living in this new environment awakened my long-lost interest in nature. Shortly after I moved, I was given a book written in the 1920s titled Forest Trees of Illinois, and I decided to begin the process of identifying all the trees on the farm. One by one, I learned their identities by the telling signs in their bark and leaf designs. There were burr oaks and red elm, black walnut and shag-bark hickories, black cherry, redbuds, and pagoda dogwood trees. One tree in particular captured my attention. It was huge and ancient, about 50 feet [15 meters] tall, and despite having lost its top long ago, it looked to be thriving and healthy.

I was pleasantly surprised when, that first June, this tree filled with small clusters of bell-shaped ivory flowers whose fragrance drifted throughout the barnyard. As soon as these small flowers bloomed, tens of thousands of honeybees and other types of pollinators gathered around the tree.

As I thumbed through my book of forest trees, I finally reached a positive identification. This massive old tree was an American linden. As I read the description of the tree’s attributes, one line describing the flowers jumped off the page: They are very fragrant and from them bees make a large amount of choice grade honey.

I became obsessed with trying this honey. What did choice-grade linden honey taste like? I researched it and learned that linden honey is consistently described as intensely floral in flavor and regarded as