Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives: A Complete Guide to Apiculture

This book covers all subjects for raising bees. It is not over your head and rambling on. I have numerous bee books and this by far is the most enjoyable to read. This is the one you buy !!!

I LOVE this book. First, it is FULL of beautiful old-style black and white illustrations. Second, it thoroughly explains the lost art of beekeeping in skeps or other fixed-frame hives and where else can people find that?! There is a current revival in some groups to keep bees in a more bee-centric way and this book explains beekeeping the way it was practiced pre-Industrial Revolution. As such, it is great for the small, back yard beek. ALSO, it explains what to do for the bees seasonally in Years 1, 2, 3 and so on covering a vast array of topics as well. It is a rich treasure of information. (Most beekeeping books just focus on getting beginners started and that's about it!)

Expert or novice, anyone interested in keeping bees should absolutely read this book. It's well written and contains everything you need to know about keeping bees. It explains the hows and whys of the Layens horizontal hive, how to make one, set it up, and how to mange the hives seasonally over the first three years. Discusses other types of hives as well, so the beekeeper knows the options and can make intelligent choices. Interesting and highly recommended.

A very informative book, completely different then the other five books I’ve read. A totally different approach to beekeeping . I thought it was very well written.

If beekeeping were taught in high school, this would be the textbook. Very beautiful, gentle use of language (would like to thank the translator), amazing illustrations (ink drawings?), and the original was written back in the 1800s! It shows that the modern commercial beekeeping has lost a lot of knowledge from the old days. Thanks to the editor for restoring this valuable resource to us backyard bee keepers.There is some info about straw skeps that is very useful to understand bee keeping concepts, even though you may not get to try out. Like I said, this is a textbook, not a how-to recipe book. The information about horizontal bee keeping is really well written. This knowledge should also translate very well to regular Langstroth hive work as well.

Great book, with lots of practical beekeeping information. Would have liked a little more information specific to horizontal hives. But a nice translation from French by Dr. Leo.

This book is useful for both beginner beeks starting out and seasoned beekeepers needing to eliminate the heavy lifting that goes along with traditional beekeeping. Highly recommended.

Lots of good information in this book. You can use this book to build a hive right from the included plans or use it as a basis and put your own spin on the design.