Books published by Northern Bee Books

This book, the Orange book, is the companion Volume 2 to its forerunner Beekeeping Study Notes for the BBKA Examinations Volume 1 (Modules 1, 2, 3 & 4), and follows an identical format addressing every topic in the syllabi of modules 5, 6, 7 & 8. It completes the series for all the BBKA examinations available to students, i.e. the green book for modules 1, 2, 3 & 4, the brown book for the Basic Examination, the red book for the Practical Examination, the blue book for the Microscopy Examination and the purple book for the Husbandry Certificate.Module 5, honeybee biology, covers some of the ground in module 4 but at the higher level required for the senior standard. This part of the syllabus where many students have difficulty. Sketches and diagrams have been included which are necessary for the examinations. It is important that candidates are able to reproduce them for examination purposes. This new edition has been re-written to incorporate module changes.The authors are very well qualified to prepare this work. They are both BBKA Examiners and Master Beekeepers well familiar with the problems that confront the students and candidates. Dawn and John Yates are both past winners of the coveted Wax Chandler Prize and are the only man and wife team to achieve this feat. Dawn is the secretary of the Plymouth Branch of the DBKA and a local honey judge. In 1996 John completed 6 years on the BBKA Examinations Board, the last three as its Chairman. He is the Devon County Education and Examination Secretary

Being a septuagenarian and having been a beekeeper on and off for over 60 years I have seen the changes in the world both good and bad. I have seen the countryside change from flowering hay meadows to billiard table top over grazed fields. Corn fields with their attendant flowering weeds changed to chemically managed mono-crops. Hedgerows laid and managed with an abundance of flowering shrubs have become annually machine cropped bristle rows, where biennial flowering shrubs like hawthorn never have a second year growth to flower.Worst of all I have seen beekeeping following some of those same trends. Beekeeping is now carried out in an almost religion based way. An established hierarchy setting down the true ways, not based on the bees' need but the beekeepers' return, with chemicals that pollute, recycled wax that contaminates.Top bar hives along with other ways such as sun hives offer a gentler way. We have a duty to our bees, we must look at our bees as our salvation not another prize in our greed.Beekeepers must be in the forefront of change for nature, not mere puppets in some commercial enterprise.