Moses Quimby was a beekeeper for decades, and wrote this guidebook to pass on the practical knowledge he had accumulated tending to bees and their hives.
We examine how to begin a hive, breed your first colony of bees, properly situate your apiary and assure that the bees are given good nutrition. Spacing the hives adequately, and protecting against common pests such as worms is discussed. How to obtain a queen, and what to do in the event a queen is lost, is paired with discussions of creating artificial swarms, that a colony's population may grow faster.
The dangers of the hobby, in particular angering the bees and stings, form their own chapters. We learn how to calm an agitated swarm with smoke, and protect a swarm from agitators such as rats, mice and certain breeds of bird. Extremes of temperature can also threaten a hive; heat can melt a honeycomb to the point where it is unusable, while cold can kill a colony altogether. Quimby responds to all these potential calamities with sound advice grounded in his own personal experience.
In the mid-19th century, beekeeping was already a refined process. A considerable community of hobbyists, including the author, enjoyed success gathering honey and overseeing large hives. Much of the advice within this manual remains useful and practical in the modern day, being as it is rooted in the biological, environmental and logistical realities of keeping bees.
