Beekeeping Nonfiction

We're still celebrating National Honey Month! Today with informational books on beekeeping!

The Backyard Beekeeper: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Keeping Bees in Your Yard and Garden by Kim Flottum - The Backyard Beekeeper, now revised and expanded, makes the time-honored and complex tradition of beekeeping an enjoyable and accessible backyard pastime that will appeal to gardeners, crafters, and cooks everywhere. This expanded edition gives you even more information on "greening" your beekeeping with sustainable practices, pesticide-resistant bees, and urban and suburban beekeeping. More than a guide to beekeeping, it is a handbook for harvesting the products of a beehive and a honey cookbook--all in one lively, beautifully illustrated reference. This complete honey bee resource contains general information on bees; a how-to guide to the art of bee keeping and how to set up, care for, and harvest honey from your own colonies; as well as tons of bee-related facts and projects. You'll learn the best place to locate your new bee colonies for their safety and yours, and you'll study the best organic and nontoxic ways to care for your bees, from providing fresh water and protection from the elements to keeping them healthy, happy, and productive.

The Bee Book by Fergus Chadwick, Steve Alton, Emma Sarah Tennant, Bill Fitzmaurice, & Judy Earl - The Bee Book shows you step-by-step how to create a bee-friendly garden, get started in beekeeping, and harness the power of honey for well-being.
Fully illustrated with full-color photographs throughout, this beautiful guide covers everything you need to know to start your own backyard hive, from setup to harvest. Practical beekeeping techniques are explained with clear step-by-step sequences, photos, and diagrams so you'll be prepared to establish your own colony, deal with diseases, collect a swarm, and much more.
A comprehensive gardening chapter features planting plans to fill container and border gardens, bee "hotel" and habitat projects, and an at-a-glance flower gallery of bees' favorite plants. The Bee Book also shows you how to harvest honey, beeswax, and propolis from the hive and use these ingredients in 38 recipes for home remedies, beauty treatments, and candle-making.

The Beekeeper's Bible: Bees, Honey, Recipes & Other Home Uses by Richard Jones & Sharon Sweeney-Lynch - The Beekeeper's Bible is as much an ultimate guide to the practical essentials of beekeeping as it is a beautiful almanac to be read from cover to cover. Part history book, part handbook, and part cookbook, this illustrated tome covers every facet of the ancient hobby of beekeeping, from how to manage hives safely to harvesting one's own honey, and ideas for how to use honey and beeswax. Detailed instructions for making candles, furniture polish, beauty products, and nearly 100 honey-themed recipes are included. Fully illustrated with how-to photography and unique etchings, any backyard enthusiast or gardener can confidently dive into beekeeping with this book in hand (or daydream about harvesting their own honey while relaxing in the comfort of an armchair).

Honey Bee Hobbyist: The Care and Keeping of Bees by Norman Gary - Bee keeping isn't just for the professional farmer--bees can be kept in any situation from the simple backyard patio and garden to large expanses of farm land. This comprehensive and attractive beekeeping guide, from Hobby Farm Press, the same people who bring you Hobby Farms and Hobby Farm Home magazine, Beekeeping takes readers from finding their bees, housing them, collecting honey and using their produce for pleasure and possible profit. This colorful book, including entertaining chapters on the history of bees and beekeeping, serves as an extensive introduction to help novice beekeepers fully understand this exciting hobby!

Keeping Bees with Ashley English: All You Need to Know to Tend Hives, Harvest Honey & More by Ashley English - Heard the buzz? Beekeeping is back! Neighborhoods across the country have embraced it as a source of sustainable food and environmental goodness. For those who want to join the "hive" of keepers, Ashley English has the lowdown on the key issues, from space and time considerations to local ordinances to the basics of acquiring, housing, maintaining, and caring for bees year round. Plus, get 10 tested honey-centric recipes!

Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture by Ross Conrad - Today's beekeepers face unprecedented challenges, a fact that is now front-page news with the spread of "colony collapse disorder." Newly introduced pests like varroa and tracheal mites have made chemical treatment of hives standard practice, but pest resistance is building, which in turn creates demand for new and even more toxic chemicals. In fact, there is evidence that chemical treatments are making matters worse.
It's time for a new approach. 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.

Save the Bees with Natural Backyard Hives: The Easy and Treatment-Free Way to Attract and Keep Healthy Bees by Rob & Chelsea McFarland - You don't need to live on a farm to raise happy, healthy honeybees. All it takes is a small backyard and the guidance of Rob and Chelsea McFarland, founders of HoneyLove - a Los Angeles-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting honeybees and educating a new generation of urban, suburban and rural beekeepers. Beekeeping is a relaxing and intriguing hobby that requires little time. It yields fresh, local honey beekeepers can keep or share, and bees help pollinate nearby gardens, trees and crops, which need help. Around the country, bee populations are declining - in part because bees raised to pollinate crops are not as durable as wild bees. Save the Bees has the solution.Save the Bees will walk readers through the inexpensive and easy to use equipment, their method for acquiring a hive for free, caring for the bees as they grow their colony, harvesting honey and prepping their bees for the cooler months. With the Save the Bees approach, readers will learn to attract wild bees. Factory-farmed bees are often advertised as "natural" but require farmers to use chemicals and pesticides to keep them alive. The Save the Bees approach does not use chemicals or pesticides and, instead, opts for natural care and management. With minimal upkeep, the hives will pollinate local crops and flowers and provide a bounty of delicious, all-natural, backyard honey.

Storey's Guide to Keeping Honey Bees by Malcom T. Sandford & Richard E. Bonney - This trusted handbook is a must-have for novice and seasoned beekeepers alike. Now totally redesigned and featuring color photos and graphics, the second edition also includes up-to-date information on honey bee health. The go-to reference presents comprehensive yet accessible information on everything from planning hives and installing a colony to preventing disease and managing productive hives that will bear bountiful honey harvests year after year.

The Thinking Beekeeper: A Guide to Natural Beekeeping in Top Bar Hives by Christy Hemenway - Give bees a chance - the complete how-to and why-to for keeping bees in top-bar hives
What's the buzz about the growing popularity of backyard beekeeping? Providing habitat for bees, pollinating your garden, and producing honey for your family are some of the compelling reasons for taking up this exciting hobby. But conventional beekeeping requires a significant investment and has a steep learning curve. The alternative? Consider beekeeping outside the box.
The Thinking Beekeeper is the definitive do-it-yourself guide to natural beekeeping in top bar hives.

Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health by Les Crowder & Heather Harrell - In recent years beekeepers have had to face tremendous challenges, from pests such as varroa and tracheal mites and from the mysterious but even more devastating phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Yet in backyards and on rooftops all over the world, bees are being raised successfully, even without antibiotics, miticides, or other chemical inputs.More and more organically minded beekeepers are now using top-bar hives, in which the shape of the interior resembles a hollow log. Long lasting and completely biodegradable, a topbar hive made of untreated wood allows bees to build comb naturally rather than simply filling prefabricated foundation frames in a typical box hive with added supers.
Top-bar hives yield slightly less honey but produce more beeswax than a typical Langstroth box hive. Regular hive inspection and the removal of old combs helps to keep bees healthier and naturally disease-free.
Top-Bar Beekeeping provides complete information on hive management and other aspects of using these innovative hives. All home and hobbyist beekeepers who have the time and interest in keeping bees intensively should consider the natural, low-stress methods outlined in this book. It will also appeal to home orchardists, gardeners, and permaculture practitioners who look to bees for pollination as well as honey or beeswax. 

Pie Cookbooks

Today is Pi Day!  Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. Pi Day is an annual opportunity for math enthusiasts to recite the infinite digits of Pi, talk to their friends about math, and to eat Pie.  I decided to concentrate on that last one!

Cutie Pies: 40 Sweet, Savory, and Adorable Recipes by Dani Cone - Move over, cupcakes! Cutie Pies features recipes for 40 delicious sweet and savory snack-size pies, following one of the hottest trends in food: tiny desserts.
Praised by Bon Appetit, DailyCandy, and Sunset magazine, the secrets behind Dani Cone's signature handmade, all-natural miniature pies are revealed for the first time inside Cutie Pies: 40 Sweet, Savory, and Adorable Recipes. Whether you're grabbing the perfectly portable Flipside on the way to work, enjoying a Piejar as a tasty afternoon treat, or looking for a fun and impressive dinner party dessert, Cutie Pies provides the perfect morsels to satisfy sweet and savory cravings alike.
Inside Cutie Pies, Cone presents 40 exclusive recipes inspired by the unique line of compact pastries she serves at her Seattle-based Fuel Coffee and High 5 Pie locations, which have received a Best of Seattle Weekly award. Sweet, one-of-a-kind treats like a Mango-Raspberry-Lemon Piepop mingle with savory recipes like Cone's Curry Veggie Piejar, all in a distinct and delightful design.

Lomelino's Pies: A Sweet Celebration of Pies, Galettes and Tarts by Linda Lomelino - Discover the glorious possibilities of the humble pie. From the tart and fruity to the luscious and gooey, Lomelino's Pies offers a delicious range of sweet pastries. World-renowned baker and food photographer Linda Lomelino presents a rich variety of pies, galettes, tarts, and more--from Peach and Strawberry Pie with Brown Butter to Nut and Caramel Pie; Hand Pies with Pears and Ginger; Fig Tart with Mascarpone, Rosemary, and Walnuts; and S'mores Pie. With lessons on making pie dough, forming decorative tops, and determining the best glaze, and with base recipes for pastries, sauces, and toppings, this book will help you perfect the art of pie.

Martha Stewart's New Pies and Tarts: 150 Recipes for Old-Fashioned and Modern Favorites by Martha Stewart - Filled with seasonal fruit, piled high with billowy meringue, or topped with buttery streusel, pies and tarts are comforting and foolproof. In Martha Stewart's New Pies and Tarts, the editors of Martha Stewart Living include 150 recipes: Some are savory, some are sweet; some are simple enough for a weeknight, while others are fancy enough for special events. Throughout, readers will find plenty of fillings and crusts, basics, and techniques for creating flavors and textures for every taste--from down-home classics that come together easily with fresh berries and stone fruits to modern tarts layered with chocolate ganache or finished with a wine glaze. There are also individual hand pies, savory comforts like quiche and potpie, holiday-worthy desserts for nearly every occasion, and much more.

Pie It Forward: Pies, Tarts, Tortes, Galettes, and Other Pastries Reinvented by Gesine Bullock-Prado - Pie has always been a popular cookbook topic, yet in Pie It Forward, baker, confectioner, and pastry master Gesine Bullock-Prado unveils an entirely new frontier of pies, redefining what can be done with a piecrust and pastry shell. Expect lattice and cutouts with an entirely modern twist. Homemade puff pastry made easy. Individual pie pops to replace tired cupcakes. Surprising and wildly successful explorations with beer (Chocolate Stout Pudding Pie), exotic fruits (Yuzu-Ginger Rice Pudding Meringue Pie), and candy making (Earl Grey Truffle Tart). And there are the classics too--riffing on her German roots, her Hollywood background, and life on her Vermont farm--a Blueberry Brown Butter Tart, an Italian Plum Tart with a yeasted-dough crust, a tiramisu-inspired Espresso Tart, a Vermont Pizza Pie, and more. Including sweet, savory, layered, and miniature pies and tarts, Bullock-Prado presents these recipes with a voice that removes the intimidation factor and inspires readers to break out of the double-crust straitjacket and try her signature creations--and to laugh out loud along the way.

Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour, and Butter by Kate Lebo - Unlock the secret to baking the perfect crust, and everything else is easy as pie. Seattle literary and culinary darling Kate Lebo shares her recipes for fifty perfect pies. Included are apple (of course), five ways with rhubarb, lemon chiffon, several blueberry pie variations, galettes, and more. Learn the tricks to making enviable baked goods and gluten-free crust while enjoying Kate Lebo's wonderfully humorous, thoughtful, and encouraging voice. In addition to recipes, Lebo invites readers to ruminate on the social history, the meaning, and the place of pie in the pantheon of favorite foods. When you have mastered the art, science and magic of creating the perfect pie in Pie School, everyone will want to be your friend.

Sister Pie: the Recipes and Stories of a Big-Hearted Bakery in Detroit by Lisa Ludwinski - At Sister Pie, Lisa Ludwinski and her band of sister bakers are helping make Detroit sweeter one slice at a time from a little corner pie shop in a former beauty salon on the city's east side. The granddaughter of two Detroit natives, Ludwinski spends her days singing, dancing, and serving up a brand of pie love that has charmed critics and drawn the curious from far and wide. No one leaves without a slice-those who don't have money in their pockets can simply cash in a prepaid slice from the "pie it forward" clothesline strung across the window. With 75 of her most-loved recipes for sweet and savory pies-such as Toasted Marshmallow-Butterscotch Pie and Sour Cherry-Bourbon Pie-and other bakeshop favorites, the Sister Pie cookbook pays homage to Motor City ingenuity and all-American spirit. Illustrated throughout with 75 drool-worthy photos and Ludwinski's charming line illustrations, and infused with her plucky, punny style, bakers and bakery lovers won't be able to resist this book.

Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes from Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan by Nancie McDermott - Ask any pie lover--the words "southern" and "pie" go together like ripe fruit and flaky pastry. And behind all the mouthwatering, light-as-a-cloud meringue peaks and the sticky dark butterscotch fillings lies a rich and delicious history. In Southern Pies, some of the South's most famous bakers share recipes for 70 pies. Perfect for bakers of all skill levels, these pies are made with simple, easy-to-find, and gloriously few ingredients. Featuring such classics as Sweet Tea Pie and New Orleans Creole Coconut Pie, this tasty homage will fill everyone at the table with Southern hospitality.

Teeny's Tour of Pie, A Cookbook: Mastering the Art of Pie in 67 Recipes by Teeny Lamothe - Teeny Lamothe is a young woman on a mission--and the mission is pie. Charming, passionate, determined, Teeny traveled America to work with the country's best bakers and learn their techniques, tricks, and wisdom. Now she shares the fruits of her apprenticeship--the crumbs and crusts of her crusade--in Teeny's Tour of Pie, a delectable journey into total pie immersion.
Here are more than 55 pies, sweet and savory, plus a complete crust primer, and all of it seasoned throughout with Teeny's humor and inspiration. There are fruit pies: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie, Lemony Blueberry Crumb Pie, Rosemary-Infused Caramel Apple Pie. Cream pies: Zested Lime Curd Pie, French Silk Pie. Traditional pies--Sweet Potato Pie, Shoofly Pie, Chess Pie--and unexpected pies--Peanut Butter Brownie Pie with a Pretzel Crust, Bourbon Bacon Pecan Pie. And savory pies, too, like Thanksgiving Dinner Pie with a Stuffing Crumble. Teeny is a gifted baker and writer who demystifies every step. She explains why to add vodka to the pie crust; what to do when the dough is sticky or tears; how to cut and weave a lattice topping. There are the 5 Commandments of Crust and more than 10 no-fail crust recipes, even including one gluten-free. Plus she shows how to make "teeny" pies--her specialty, using a 5-inch pie pan--from the recipes.

Vegan Pie in the Sky: 75 Out of This World Recipes for Pies, Tarts, Cobblers, and More by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero - Holidays? Check. Birthdays? Check. Tuesdays? Check! Our research says life is 100% better any day pie is involved. There's nothing like a rich, gooey slice of apple pie straight from the oven, baked in a perfectly flaky crust and topped with cinnamon-sugar. And now it can be yours, along with dozens more mouthwatering varieties, vegan at last and better than ever. Vegan Pie in the Sky is the latest force in Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero's baking revolution. You'll find delicious and adorable pies, tarts, cobblers, cheesecakes and more- all made without dairy, eggs, or animal products. From fruity to chocolaty, nutty to creamy, Vegan Pie in the Sky has the classic flavors you crave. And the recipes are as easy as, well, you know. Serve up some: Maple-Kissed Blueberry Pie, She's My Cherry Pie, Chocolate-Peanut Butter Tartlets, Salted Pecan Caramel Pie, or Pumpkin Cheesecake.  Learn how to rock (and roll) the perfect pastry crust, whether butter, graham cracker, chocolate cookie, or gluten-free almond. Luscious toppings transform your pie into a showstopper. And you'll even find handheld treats, to make getting your recommended daily allowance of pie more convenient! With gorgeous colour photos and Isa and Terry's irreverent commentary throughout, Vegan Pie in the Sky is the modern baker's bible for pie that's out of this world.

A Year of Pies: A Seasonal Tour of Home Baked Pies by Ashley English - What's better than pie? How about recipes for 60 delicious pies and tarts from cooking maven Ashley English and top food bloggers like Beatrice Peltre, Aran Goyoaga, and Jessie Oleson? These beautifully photographed seasonal recipes include such delights as a Chocolate & Orange Marmalade Tart in winter, a Strawberry & Rhubarb Ginger Hand Pie in spring, a classic Lattice Top Triple Berry Pie in summer, and Rosemary Bourbon Sweet Potato Pie in autumn. A Basics section offers six piecrust recipes, troubleshooting tips, and advice on selecting seasonal ingredients.