Beekeeping Reading

My reading pile just keeps getting bigger! (Charlotte Ekker Wiggins photo)

Beekeeping Reading

If you are starting your beekeeping journey, staying on top of the latest developments is very important including making sure you are reading information from reliable sources. Watching You Tube videos can be entertaining but not necessarily the best practices for your area. And some websites, albeit well intentioned, also don’t provide the best information in context for what you are doing.

So where to go.

As beekeepers we are very lucky to have two magazines that are excellent reliable resources.

Bee Culture Magazine

Kim Flotum and Jerry Hayes make sure this monthly publication as a nice range of articles from beekeeping book reviews to a kid’s page, honey plants and urban beekeeping information. They include a segment that highlights the amateur engineers that beekeepers are, this segment features tips and tricks beekeepers themselves have developed.

Annual subscription: $25 with discounts for multiple year subscriptions.

Free annual calendar with every subscription.

American Bee Journal

American Bee Journal (ABJ) magazine is the “oldest English language publication on bees” helping beekeepers for more than 100 years. Eugene Makovec is the editor, someone Missouri beekeepers know well from his days as the newsletter editor of our state beekeeping association. This monthly magazine includes .monthly crop and market information, scientific and experimental reports, industry news, display and classified ads.

Annual subscription: $29. You can get a discount for multiple year subscriptions and a 15% discount by being a paid member of Missouri State Beekeepers Association and a local bee club.

You can also request a free sample.

Which Magazine to Start?

Depends on several factors. Can you speak in beekeeping terms or are you still learning? Do you understand scientific research and how it is conducted, and reported, or does that seem over your head?

If you live in the Rolla, MO area you can check out copies of Bee Culture Magazine from our local library and get a feel for what is in that magazine. If you are out of county, a $20 annual membership will also get you access to those magazines and the rest of the library including the extensive beekeeping book section. Rolla Bee Club, which I started in 2014, donated several dozen beekeeping books a few years back to update that section.

So back to the original question, which magazine. I personally would recommend starting with Bee Culture Magazine. They have some fun sections on building some of your own equipment.

Once you are fluent in beekeeping and basic beekeeping principles, then American Bee Journal may be of interest. Jamie Ellis out of the University of Florida answers submitted questions.

Honey Bee Suite

If you prefer to read online, start with Rusty Burlew’s blog Honey Bee Suite. Rusty does an excellent job of tackling not only the larger beekeeping issues but the little ones as well.

Happy reading!

Charlotte

Beekeeping Magazines

These are three excellent beekeeping gift ideas, either individually or together. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Beekeeping Magazines

The emails asking for beekeeping gift recommendations have started to come in and this is an easy question to answer. Potential gift-givers have three excellent potential gifts, either individually or together: beekeeping magazines.

Beekeeping is a continuous, life-learning experience. To help beekeepers with the changes and recent beekeeping developments, we are lucky to have three excellent magazines focused on these tiny, fascinating creatures.

i know the editors of all three magazines, all excellent beekeepers themselves with a passion for what they do and the information they share. The following is a short description of each and what the reader can expect to get.

All four are available in both print and digital formats.

American Bee Journal is published by Dadant and Sons, Illinois. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

American Bee Journal

American Bee Journal (ABJ) magazine is the “oldest English language publication on bees” helping beekeepers for more than 100 years. Eugene Makovec is the editor, someone Missouri beekeepers know well from his days as the newsletter editor of our state beekeeping association newsletter. This monthly magazine includes .monthly crop and market information, scientific and experimental reports, industry news, display and classified ads.

Annual subscription: $29. You can get a discount for multiple year subscriptions and a 15% discount by being a paid member of Missouri State Beekeepers Association and a local bee club.

You can also request a free sample.

Bee Culture is published by A.I. Root out of Ohio. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Bee Culture

Kim Flotum and Jerry Hayes make sure this monthly publication also has a nice range of articles from beekeeping book reviews to a kid’s page, honey plants and urban beekeeping information. They include a segment that highlights the amateur engineers that beekeepers are, this segment features tips and tricks beekeepers themselves have developed.

Annual subscription: $25 with discounts for multiple year subscriptions.

Free annual calendar with every subscription.

Two Million Blossoms is published by Protect our Pollinators LLC. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

2 Million Blossoms

Managing Editor Kirsten Traynor is starting her third year with this elegant quarterly publication about pollinators and what we can all do to protect them. As the former editor of a couple other magazines, Kirsten is developing a network of reporters and photographers around the world who help her highlight the amazing world of creatures that provide us with one out of every three bites of healthy food we eat.

A note for my Canadian friends, there is a separate Canadian edition.

This would be an excellent gift for not only beekeepers but also gardeners on your gift list.

Annual subscription: $35

How to Make This Into a Gift Set

Giving a magazine is not easy unless you can find a previous edition to attach to a subscription card. So how do you make this more immediately special?

Flower seeds are currently still available at home and garden centers so pick up a few to add to the subscription card. Regardless of what magazine you subscribe to, flowers feed bees. You may also be able to find local honey to buy, which is basically the essence of flowers. It takes 2 million blossoms to make one pound of honey.

If you want something more immediate, look for a good pair of beekeeping gloves. Or a smoker. Many home and garden centers are now carrying basic beekeeping equipment. You may also be able to get these ordered online and delivered in time.

If you’re around beekeepers you will hear them say they look forward to winter so they can catch up with their reading so whichever magazine you select to give will be appreciated!

Charlotte

Beekeeping Magazine Gifts

Two of the current beekeeping magazines available, both excellent sources of updated information. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Beekeeping Magazine Gifts

The beekeeping community is lucky to have two long-standing magazines that keep beekeepers up to date on new developments.

Bee Culture Magazine, out of Ohio, will be under new editorial leadership in 2020. Editor Jerry Hayes is following in Kim Flotum’s footsteps, offering beekeepers a round robin of upcoming event information across the country as well as a variety of feature stories. The A.I. Root company publication also has BEEKeeping, Your First Three Years focused on beginning beekeepers. I haven’t seen BEEKeeping but based on their other publication it would be safe to say it will be a very helpful resource for beginning beekeepers.

The other beekeeping magazine is American Bee Journal, published by Dadant in Illinois. Editor Eugene Makovac focuses on both native and honey bees as well as some pollinator planting information. I wrote several bee plant articles for the publication earlier this year, something I was glad to do to increasing beekeeper’s awareness of how to feed their bees naturally. I suspect Eugene had his eye more on the recipe for making Chicory roots into coffee, something we had discussed previously.

If I had to choose one, which one would it be?

When I was starting to keep bees, I found Bee Culture to have articles that I could more easily follow and understand. When I passed the 5th year, I graduated to better understanding articles in American Bee Journal. I get both publications and tend to catch up on reading over winter so pardon me if I don’t quite correctly identify the source of a particular bit of information. Knowing the new information is what is important.

If you are a member of Missouri State Beekeeping Association $10 a year, you can get a discounted American Bee Journal subscription. Nice way to bundle both into a gift!

The bottom line is as beekeepers we have to stay on top the current research and recommendations. The day of doing what grandpa did are long gone.

Here are links to their subscription pages:

Bee Culture $25/yr

American Bee Journal $28/yr

American Bee Journal discounted subscription with MSBA membership: $23.80 plus $10 membership.

And starting next year, beekeepers will have an excellent third resource, Two Million Blossoms from Dr. Kirsten Traynor. You can get a sneak preview of the kinds of beekeeping-related articles she plans to have with this one in the inaugural edition from University of Minnesota’s Dr. Marla Spivak on the role of propolis in the hive.

This grand new quarterly magazine will launch January 2020. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Two Million Blossoms offers a hard copy subscription for $35/yr and a digital subscription for $20. I am among the contributing writers to this edition with an article on how to use cardboard instead of chemicals to start a new flower garden.

The nice thing about giving magazines is that it’s a gift that keeps on giving.

Charlotte