Bees are fascinating creatures with complex behaviours some of which we still don't understand. In order to keep honey bees the best way possible we need to try to understand how and why bees behave the way they do, and endeavour to allow bees to live as nature intended with minimum interference - after all bees have been around for a few more million years than we have... Take a look at the sections below for information on the honey bee and natural bee keeping, and an introduction to the other 249 species of bee we have in the UK
Back to the main bee keeping page
Here are some links to some free books regarding bee keeping and the honey bee. Some (most) are quite old but are still very interesting and surprising - 'Bees shouldn't be allowed to fly at the same height as horses heads and carriage drivers' Good advice!
Enjoy!
http://www.users.callnetuk.com/~heaf/beekeeping_for_all.pdf
https://www.natural-beekeeping.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/At-the-Hive-Entrance.pdf
https://archive.org/stream/howtokeepbeeshan00coms?ref=ol#page/148/mode/2up
This link takes you to an open library with lots of free books to download - https://openlibrary.org/search?q=bee+keeping&mode=ebooks&has_fulltext=true