The Backyard Beekeeper's Honey Handbook: A Guide to Creating, Harvesting, and Cooking with Natural Honeys [Paperback]

Kim Flottum (Author)

Book Description

Series: Backyard | Publication Date: January 1, 2009

A truly lush, radiant enthusiast’s guide, The Backyard Beekeeper’s Honey Handbook goes beyond the scope of a cookbook to introduce to readers the literal cornucopia of honey varieties available. An intuitive follow-up to The Backyard Beekeeper, this book will presume beekeeping experience but reintroduce the basics. It is an insight into the practical, back-to-the-earth beekeeping lifestyle and well as the artisan cultivation of honey varieties.

 

Supplementary support for this book lay in the fact that interest in tapping honey’s holistic and whole-health potential dovetails nicely into the natural health and green movements. Also, honey as natural, lower-calorie sweetener has garnered positive PR by those working against the obesity epidemic.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

After receiving a degree in horticulture from UW Madison, Kim Flottum worked four years in the USDA Honey Bee Research Lab, studying pollination ecology. After that, he spent two years raising acres of fruits and vegetables, where bees played a large role. He brings this experience, plus nearly 20 years of writing and editing articles for beekeepers in the monthly magazine Bee Culture. He is the publisher of books on honey bee pests and diseases, marketing, queen production, beekeeping history, beginning beekeeping, and the classic industry reference, The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Quarry Books (January 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592534740
• ISBN-13: 978-1592534746
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #84 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking by Ingredient > Herbs, Spices & Condiments
  • #90 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Insects & Spiders

More About the Author

After receiving a degree in horticulture from UW Madison, Kim Flottum worked four years in the USDA Honey Bee Research Lab, studying pollination ecology. After that, he spent two years raising acres of fruits and vegetables, where bees played a large role. He brings this experience, plus nearly 20 years of writing and editing articles for beekeepers in the monthly magazine Bee Culture. He is the publisher of books on honey bee pests and diseases, marketing, queen production, beekeeping history, beginning beekeeping, and the classic industry reference, The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For the Beginner Only, February 17, 2009

By 

John E. Emery (NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Backyard Beekeeper's Honey Handbook: A Guide to Creating, Harvesting, and Cooking with Natural Honeys (Paperback)

I have the utmost respect for Kim Flottum's work. However, this book does not meet its stated goals. Flottum describes the book as "not for the beginner." Why, then, does he spend so much time and space covering basic material? For his stated audience, there is no reason to spend pages explaining how honey is made, or how to extract honey, or what flowers make good honey. All of this information, and much more, can be found in any introductory beekeeping text.

For the beginner, this might make a useful addition to a starter beekeeping library, after you have picked up a copy of "The Hive and the Honey Bee." For the seasoned beek, this book is completely unnecessary.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent sequel to Flottum's first book, August 5, 2009

By 

Cook and New Gardener (Washington state, United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Backyard Beekeeper's Honey Handbook: A Guide to Creating, Harvesting, and Cooking with Natural Honeys (Paperback)

I was initially a little hesitant to buy this book, given the mixed reviews at Amazon, but after receiving it and looking at it, I'm pleased that I did. It's a great follow-on book to Kim Flottum's first book, The Backyard Beekeeper, which gives good basic coverage to hive management practices, bee life cycle and diseases and parasites. This book solidly covers honey production, something that was left out of the first book. I was happy to find the chapter entitled "Guide to Honey Plants" with pictures for identifying common nectar sources, or more importantly, a guide on what to plant in my yard to keep my bees happy with nectar flows throughout spring and summer and make the kind of honey I like. The middle section of the book covers honey harvesting practices (removing bees, honey extraction, filtering, bottling). The last section has recipes for using honey - some look good or okay, some not so much. The last section is definitely not the strength of the book. As a hobbyist beekeeper with a handful of hives in my yard, this book is a great guide for the scale of honey production I am working with.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honey Handbook, October 29, 2010

By 

K. Lanctot (CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Backyard Beekeeper's Honey Handbook: A Guide to Creating, Harvesting, and Cooking with Natural Honeys (Paperback)

I found this book to be very informative. There is a lot of information and it is clear and easy to understand. It tells about the anatomy of the bees, where & why they forage, how to harvest the honey, what equipment you'll need and how to handle all of the above. It also comes with some quite good honey recipes. If you are interested beekeeping and honey this book will help you do it.