Honey-Bee: Its Nature, Homes, and Products: Gardening in America

Applewood books has published reprints of two of beekeeping's great past books. The first is "The Honey-Bee, Its Nature, Home and Products," by William Hetherington Harris, from the UK, first published in 1884. It has over 80 line-drawing illustrations of everything you can imagine. It covers anatomy and what physiology was known, the different hives in use (Langstroth isn't mentioned, yet had been around for over 25 years), swarming, feeding, wintering, bee stings, flowers, superstitions and how to make money keeping bees - a four page chapter. Bee specialists knew more than you might imagine back then, and you will learn some things, and certainly be entertained by what they thought they knew. -- Kim Flottum, Editor of Bee Culture "Bee Culture: The Magazine of American Beekeeping" (01/12/2009)

J. William Harris is a professor and chair of the History Department at the University of New Hampshire. His previous books include Society and Culture in the Slave South (editor) and Plain Folk and Gentry in a Slave Society: White Liberty and Black Slavery in Augusta's Hinterlands.

"William Harris presents a concise introduction to beekeeping, in the hope that more people will take an interest in apiary."