Don't Worry BEE HAPPY! Start your Bee colony today! There are 140,000 beekeepers in the United States keeping 3. 2 million beehives. American beekeepers produced 200 million pounds of honey a year. In addition, honey bees pollinate and make possible many of the fruits and vegetables that make up the American diet. In fact, the annual contribution of honey bees to crop pollination and production is over nine billion dollars. But to tell the truth, these are not the reasons why many beekeepers have kept bees. Most keep bees because they enjoy the outdoors. They enjoy helping a young colony grow in spring. They enjoy watching the bees make honey. They enjoy harvesting, bottling, and selling honey as well. If you raise animals or work with wood, grow a garden or have an entrepreneurial spirit, you might be a candidate for beekeeping. You'd be surprised at how gentle they can be, and of the many places where you can keep bees. We'll go ahead and discuss the basics of backyard beekeeping. As an example, we'll set up ten bee hives from scratch-that is with packages of bees in the mail, just like what veteran beekeepers did when they were starting out. This audiobook will help you follow the progress of this bee yard, or apiary, as it matures and develops in to a full blown colony, so you will see what you can expect. But before we begin, let's look at some other history of beekeeping.
