I chose to reprint this book because it is one of the most practical beekeeping books I know of. Isaac Hopkins obviously had a lot of real life experience and not just a lot of book knowledge. This book was probably the most influential book on beekeeping in Australia and New Zealand. I also chose this because Hopkins presents in this version of the book one of the simplest ways of getting a lot of queens that also does not require a lot of special equipment known as "the Hopkins method of queen rearing". This is a great book on beekeeping in any location in any age. Also includes Hopkin's "Forty-two years of bee-keeping in New Zealand" as an appendix as well as Pellet's version of the Hopkins method and, since it was quite different and quite useful, the 1886 Australasian Bee Manual's chapter on queen rearing.