Increase Essentials

By Lawrence John Connor (Author), Robert Gregory Muir (Editor), Randy Kim (Editor). Forward by Kim Flottum. Second Edition. Soft cover, black & white. Bee Cultures Larry Connor explores the fundamentals of starting new, healthy and production hives. Techniques, biology, regional differences, swarms and packages are covered. This book explains why and how beekeepers can use increase nuclei to solve problems in the beeyard and use them to winter colonies and provide a reliable source of fresh bees, locally acclimatized queens, replacement hives and colonies for operational growth or sale. Connor draws on the concepts of Langstroth, Doolittle, Brother Adam, Mike Palmer and more while integrating his unique academic and commercial beekeeping experiences into this concise and thought-provoking second edition. Adding more methods of making increase colonies and recent developments in the science of bee biology, the second edition expands on its predecessor with rich, colorful photography and diagrams. In less than a decade, the beekeeping industry has made a wide-spread shift to increase nuclei colonies as a means of producing new colonies in the face of heavy losses from poor nutrition, pesticides, virus-mite interactions and general climate change.