An Introduction to Bee-houses

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This book is intended to be a simple, thought provoking and hopefully enjoyable introduction to the keeping of bees in bee-houses. It is not intended to be a text book on keeping bees since there are many excellent reference books already in circulation. Whilst the bee-house has existed for many years in European countries such as Switzerland, Austria and Germany it has failed to capture the imagination of beekeepers in this country and currently we have only a limited number of practitioners to-date. Without wanting to pre-empt the main text of this book I believe that because we have relatively mild winters in this country and assume that our bees can cope easily with British winters we feel we have no need of extra protection and in acting on this assumption we ignore or fail to appreciate the many additional advantages to be derived from operating a bee-house. I am told it took fifty years for British beekeepers to move over from skeps to fixed frame hives so maybe I should not expect a rush to change. However I do believe that we have allowed others to enjoy this system of keeping bees for long enough and its time we understood and enjoyed the benefits of this approach. As a past chairman of my local division of the BBKA it makes me sad to see beekeepers having to give up their bees because they lack mobility or have difficulty lifting. Equally we often meet disabled people who would love to keep bees but feel they cannot cope with conventional hives in the open and on rough ground and do not want keep asking other beekeepers for help. Whilst a bee-house would not solve all their problems it would provide a more friendly environment in which to experiment with potential solutions and they may well find they attract other beekeepers who want practical experience of this approach.