Whether you are a novice looking to get started with bees, an experienced apiculturist looking for ideas to develop an integrated pest-management approach, or someone who wants to sell honey at a premium price, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Now revised and updated with new resources and including full-color photos throughout, Natural Beekeeping offers all the latest information in a book that has already proven invaluable for organic beekeepers. The new edition offers the same holistic, sensible alternative to conventional chemical practices with a program of natural hive management, but offers new sections on a wide range of subjects, including:

• The basics of bee biology and anatomy
• Urban beekeeping
• Identifying and working with queens
• Parasitic mite control
• Hive diseases

Also, a completely new chapter on marketing provides valuable advice for anyone who intends to sell a wide range of hive products.

Other chapters include:

• Hive Management
• Genetics and Breeding
• The Honey Harvest
• The Future of Organic Beekeeping

Ross Conrad brings together the best “do no harm” strategies for keeping honeybees healthy and productive with nontoxic methods of controlling mites; eliminating American foulbrood disease without the use of antibiotics; selective breeding for naturally resistant bees; and many other detailed management techniques, which are covered in a thoughtful, matter-of-fact way.

1. Why organic beekeeping?
2. Working with the hive
3. Hive management
4. Genetics and breeding
5. Parasitic mites
6. Insect pests
7. Four-legged and feathered pests
8. Environmental and human threats
9. Hive diseases
10. The honey harvest
11. Marketing
12. Organics and the evolution of beekeeping