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Interviews with Beekeepers, Donohoe

£28.95
£28.95

Interviews with Beekeepers

Steve Donohoe
£28.95
£28.95
Taxes included.
Zuntold Publishing (1st ed. 2020)
Softback / 358 Pages
ISBN 978-191620-425-6

A rare insight into the lives of commercial beekeepers, warts and all, Interviews With Beekeepers is gold dust to anyone who wants to know more about keeping bees.

For author Steve Donohoe, beekeeping was a form of therapy – an escape from the stresses of corporate life to something natural and healing. Steve decided to write the book that he wanted to read but couldn’t find anywhere. Seeking out some of the most successful beekeepers in the world, Steve spent time with them, interviewed and got to know them. This book is a collection of the wisdom, experiences, opinions and stories of these legends of beekeeping.

VIEW Contents
  • • Why this book is different
  1. Murray McGregor (Coupar Angus, Scotland)
    1. Introduction to Murray
    2. Talking with Jolanta and Murray
    3. Queen rearing
    4. Murray's story
    5. Advice on becoming commercial
    6. Revenue splits
    7. Worst years and best years
    8. Breeding programme
    9. Current issues and controversy in beekeeping
    10. Insulation and ventilation
    11. Buy them in or grow your own queens?
    12. Neonicotinoids
    13. Disease and pest management
    14. Swarm control
    15. On selecting queens
    16. Finding apiary sites
    17. Things that matter or things that are changing
    18. Working with others ... and people I admire now
    19. Things that rile me
    20. Plans for the future
    21. Beekeeping philosophy and innovations in design or approach
    22. That issue with the antibiotics
    23. Afterword
  2. Michael Palmer (Vermont, USA)
    1. Introduction to Mike and re-queening nucs
    2. Talking with Mike
    3. Good years and bad years
    4. Before beekeeping
    5. Mentors
    6. On going commercial
    7. Operations and revenue streams
    8. Natural beekeeping
    9. Insulation and ventilation
    10. Neonicotinoids
    11. Beekeeping in cities
    12. Queen breeding
    13. Hobby beekeepers
    14. Introducing queens
    15. On making mistakes and meeting challenges
    16. Legends from the beekeeping world
    17. Thoughts on buying package bees
    18. Slipping standards
    19. Notes and diagrams on Mike's sustainable beekeeping method
  3. Ray Olivarez (Orlando, California, USA)
    1. Introduction to Ray
    2. Talking with Ray
    3. Operations and the business of bee-farming
    4. How it all began
    5. How we grew the business
    6. Mentors
    7. Advice on becoming commercial and challenges involved
    8. On queen rearing and instrumental insemination
    9. Supporting hobby beekeepers
    10. Mite bombs
    11. Revenue splits
    12. Finding the apiaries and breeding queens for performance
    13. Methods used for queen rearing
    14. On being a family business
    15. Brexit, equality and developing the labour force
    16. Hard times and disasters
    17. Being a good beekeeper - some tips on the craft
    18. Inventions and brilliant ideas
    19. Controversy - imports and environmental concerns
    20. Ventilation and insulation
    21. Varroa treatments
    22. On growing the business and looking after the bees
    23. Predictions
    24. Future plans
  4. Peter Little (Exmore, UK)
    1. Introduction to Peter
    2. Talking with Peter
    3. As we began ...
    4. Business and operations
    5. On breeding queens and artificial insemination
    6. "There's a total difference between being a queen producer and a queen breeder."
    7. Organisation and operations
    8. How did you start?
    9. Brother Adam's mating station and black bees
    10. Neonicotinoids and pesticides
    11. Mentors
    12. Queen grafting
    13. All about swarm control
    14. Stopping the wax moth
    15. Good years, bad years
    16. Honey production and coping with robbing
    17. Advice for those who want to become commercial
    18. Those who have inspired me
    19. Buckfast Abbey and Brother Adam
    20. Which bees are 'best'?
    21. How can your average bee keeper improve his or her stock?
    22. How do the quad boxes work?
    23. 'Wood or poly hives?
    24. The cycle of beekeeping
    25. Selling honey
    26. Bee diseases and how things have changed
    27. Professor David Evan's work on Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus
    28. Personal and political bee stuff
    29. Treating bees for varroa
    30. Educating yourself on beekeeping
    31. To checkerboard or not to checkerboard?
    32. Providing space and swarm prevention
    33. Types of bee hives
    34. Future Plans
  5. Peter Bray (Leeston, New Zealand)
    1. Introduction to Peter
    2. Talking with Peter
    3. How the company began
    4. Building the laboratory
    5. Economics and the economy
    6. Moving from bee-keeping to research
    7. The Manuka phenomenon
    8. Rise of the Leptospermums
    9. Good years and bad years
    10. Mentors
    11. My working week
    12. Revenue streams and the world market
    13. Varroa
    14. Concerns and challenges for beekeepers (and the World)
    15. Types of bees
    16. Working with beekeepers
    17. Predictions for the future and for Airborne Honey
    18. Things that rile me
    19. Legacy
    20. Inventions and adaptations
    21. Pyrrolizidine alkaloids
    22. Honey production
    23. Prospects for young people wanting to become a beekeeper
    24. Afterword on Manuka
  6. Richard Noel (Brittany, France)
    1. Introduction to Richard
    2. Talking with Richard
    3. On good and bad years and becoming commercial
    4. Why I became a beekeeper
    5. How do you set up a swarm trap?
    6. Mentors
    7. Working hours and revenues
    8. On finding apiaries
    9. On natural beekeeping and other controversial issues
    10. On importing queens
    11. The beekeeping year
    12. Swarm control
    13. Selecting queens
    14. On how I rear queens
    15. What have I learned?
    16. The future of beekeeping
    17. Heroes of beekeeping and things that irritate me
    18. Inventions and modifications
    19. The Asian hornet
  7. Randy Oliver (California, USA)
    1. Introduction to Randy
    2. Talking with Randy
    3. Who is Randy Oliver?
    4. A family business
    5. Learning from mistakes and high levels of rain
    6. On being a scientist
    7. Dealing with bears and growing cannabis
    8. Running trials to solve the three biggest challenges facing bees and their keepers
    9. Research and understanding Varroa
    10. A bit about Citrus Greening Disease
    11. Future proofing - building a Varroa resistant strain
    12. Personal story - how it all began
    13. ScientificBeekeeping.com
    14. Persuading beekeepers to breed varroa resistant bees
    15. Colony Collapse Disorder
    16. Thoughts on Manuka honey
    17. Revenue streams
    18. Dealing with swarming
    19. Advice on going commericial
    20. The beekeeping year
    21. Increased CO2 and the impact on the nutritional needs of bees
    22. Mistakes I have made
    23. Finding Apiaries and Global Warming
    24. Queen breeding
    25. Afterword
  8. David Kemp (Nottinghamshire, UK)
    1. Introduction to David
    2. Talking with David
    3. How have things changed?
    4. Buckfast Abbey
    5. Brother Adam's queen rearing exploits
    6. Keeping the queens alive and work with Dr Butler
    7. Artificial insemination and Brother Adam
    8. Developing disease resistant bees
    9. How I started at Buckfast Abbey
    10. The beekeeping year - Winter
    11. Equalising colonies
    12. Queen rearing - planning, preparation and crafty exporting
    13. My childhood and how I became interested in bees
    14. FROW a treatment for Acarine
    15. Breeding varroa resistant bees
    16. Revenue streams at Buckfast Abbey
    17. Insulation and ventilation
    18. After Buckfast Abbey
    19. How did Brother Adam raise queens?
    20. Starving bees!
    21. How to introduce queens
    22. Selecting apiary sites
    23. Braula mites
    24. Swarm prevention
    25. Breeding for variety not purity
    26. Worst times as a bee inspector
    27. What is the biggest threat to bees?
    28. What would I put right if I could?
    29. Favourite books
    30. Black bees
    31. Different sorts of hives
    32. Plans for the future
    33. So, what's it all about?
    34. Good years and bad years
    35. Moving bees
    36. Best advice for finding queens
    37. Best advice for finding queens Respect for bees
  • • Acknowledgements

Country/region

Country/region