The BeeHolder, July 2009

Queen Bee – Biology, Rearing and Breeding

By David Woodward.

There is no single way to be a beekeeper. But the easiest way to start is to read a book and accept an old beekeeper as a guru. To read two books or have two gurus will be confusing. Our Training Course tutor, Brian Goodwin, from Shrewsbury recommends that one either starts beekeeping by reading one bee book or 6. Reading two is just too confusing.

Queen Bee, Biology, Rearing and Breeding has a wealth of knowledge beyond that suggested by the title. It is really about the biology care and breeding of the honey bee and as such, it is definitely one of the 6 beebooks to have on ones shelf. But don’t have it as your first beebook: David Woodward goes through his subject far too fast. Different methods of rearing bees are described without dogmatically advocating any one method. So have this book as your third beebook and you probably won’t need to buy the 4th 5th and 6th.

As head of the Head of the Apiculture Department at the Telford Rural Polytechnic, Balclutha, New Zealand one would expect Dr Woodward to know how to communicate with students. He makes complex subjects very simple without ever talking down to his audience. But he does assume a background knowledge of the subject matter hence the book should never be one’s first read about bees

The book is £21 post-paid from Northern Bee Books, has clear and comprehensive coloured pictures, drawings and tables and enough information to fill a book three times the length. It is to Dr Woodward’s credit that so much information can so clearly and simply be expressed in so few pages. At the end of each page I often found myself thinking that I had attended whole lectures on the subject of just one of Dr Woodward’s paragraphs, and I had understood his explanation far better.

There are times when Dr Woodward seems to suggest that successful Queen Rearing can only take place when one has more than 100 hives. The average reader, however, will be the hobbyist with far fewer. To these he makes a persuasive case for manipulating hives so as to encourage the supercedure rearing impulse of the colony.

Understanding the principle of queen breeding on the large commercial level will allow many beekeepers the opportunity of selecting a regime adapted to their own small apiary. However the chances of being able to select for any characteristic seem very slim. In a way that is comforting. To those who think they have successfully bred docile bees Dr Woodward would say it is luck. To those who struggle year after year with low yields or too much swarming (or any other the other traits that both annoy and fascinate beekeepers) Dr Woodward brings comfort through some easy to follow explanations.

For most hobbyists being able to successfully raise replacement queens will be the height of their beekeeping ambition. This book is an essential read to achieving that ambition.

Arthur Finlay