The Joys of Beekeeping is one of the most delightful books about bees and beekeeping that I’ve ever come across.
In fact, if I had to declare one book about bees to be my favorite, and have only that one book in my library (heaven forbid!), it would be this book.
The author, the late Dr. Richard Taylor, was a lifelong beekeeper. He was a professor of philosophy, and beekeeping was his avocation.
For many years, Dr. Taylor wrote a column for Bee Culture magazine called Bee Talk. This was always my favorite part of the magazine, the part I always read first. (And unfortunately, the magazine hasn’t come close to replacing him since he retired).
He was very knowledgeable about beekeeping, and offered many great tips about the how-to’s of being a beekeeper. But he absolutely excelled at communicating the pure joy and delight (and sometimes trials and tribulations) of being a beekeeper.
The Joys of Beekeeping contains some materials from his columns over the years, and some new materials written specifically for the book. And it’s an absolute delight from cover to cover.
I highly recommend this book to beekeepers, and to anyone simply interested in honeybees.
Unfortunately, The Joys of Beekeeping is out of print. But as of this writing, there are some used copies available online at Amazon.com
I should also mention another book written by Dr. Taylor titled The Comb Honey Book. It’s a great instructional manual for producing comb honey. But it’s also out of print, and I don’t know of anyplace online that it’s currently available. If you’re a beekeeper interested in producing comb honey, I’d recommend that you snag this book if you happen to come across it somewhere.
