The Idle Beekeeper

Global bee populations have been rapidly declining for years, and it’s not just our honey supply that’s at stake: bees’ contribution to the pollination of various crops is essential to human survival. But even in industrial apiaries—the most common approach to facilitate the rebound of threatened bee populations—bees are in distress, hiving in synthetic and hostile environments. Enter idle beekeeping: the grassroots, low-intervention system of beekeeping that seeks to emulate the behavior and habitat of bees in the wild—and it only requires two active days of beekeeping per year. In The Idle Beekeeper, Bill Anderson calls upon his years of applied curiosity as an urban beekeeper to highlight the invaluable resources that these underappreciated insects provide and show how simple and rewarding beekeeping can be. In this entertaining, philosophical, and practical guide, Anderson teaches step-by-step how to build a hive system developed to allow maximum idleness, harvest