The Idle Beekeeper: The Low-Effort, Natural Way to Raise Bees

by Bill Anderson

From building a hive to harvesting honey, a top urban beekeeper shares how to care for bees the simple, mindful way.
Global bee populations have been rapidly declining for years, and it’s not just our honey supply that’s at the contribution of bees to the pollination of crops is essential to human survival. But even in industrial apiaries, bees are in distress, hiving in synthetic and hostile environments. Enter idle the grassroots, low-intervention system that seeks to emulate the behavior and habitat of bees in the wild—and it only requires two active days of beekeeping per year, one in the spring and another in the fall.

In The Idle Beekeeper , Bill Anderson calls upon his years of applied curiosity as an urban beekeeper to celebrate these underappreciated insects and show how simple and rewarding beekeeping can be. In this entertaining, philosophical, and practical guide, Anderson shares why and how to build a hive system that is both cutting-edge and radically old. Maximum idleness is achieved through step-by-step directions to help the beekeeper gently harvest honey with minimum effort, make mead and beeswax candles, and closely observe and understand these fascinating and productive social creatures. For anyone interested in keeping bees, The Idle Beekeeper is the definitive guide to getting started, even in a city, and without effort.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gardening

240 pages, Hardcover

Published May 7, 2019

Reviews

[Lex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice middle ground between "I can talk to bees, literally" and "here's how commercial beekeepers do it so this is the only way to do it." Bill actually discusses wild hives and the superorganism in factual, researched (real studies!!!) way and how that can inform hobbyist beekeeping. He's quite clear that his method is not intensive honey production, and that it may in fact cost more than it produces. He's also VERY persuasive that it's extremely worthwhile and results in healthier, stronger bees. There's a lot of discussion of lifespan and generation length, and how heating the hive results in a shorter lifespan, and how a shorter lifespan results in a weaker hive because... It all cascades, essentially, and Bill breaks it down into digestible portions. He isn't providing a cure-all or a perfect method and admits it freely; he's doing his best with the information at hand. I absolutely love his methods and the depth of thought he's put into it. The layman's breakdown of R-value versus thermal mass was SO important!!

[Arminzerella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bill Anderson keeps his bees on a rooftop in Warre hives in London and his "idle" methods may be said to be more beneficial to the bees than proof of laziness on the part of the keeper. His hives are insulated year-round with wool bats, keeping them at a more constant temperature and requiring less effort/energy expenditure on the bees' part to warm or cool them. Anderson's more hands-off method is less invasive and disturbing to the bees. He keeps his forays into the hive brief, and understands much about bee behavior that enables him to anticipate and fulfill their needs without unnecessarily disturbing them in their homes. Informative and entertaining, all the beeks should pick this one up and read it cover to cover. Lots of information and ideas to process!

[Billie Hinton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a how-to book if you’re interested in Warre hives, but for all other beekeepers it’s more a philosophical look at beekeeping through the lens of science. Anderson does a brilliant job of weaving in interesting information and presenting science with comparisons that make it easy for the lay person to grasp. It’s the rare beekeeping book that is both informational and a great read. Highly recommend.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up based on the title. My husband and I took a beekeeping class and have tried to keep bees for two years, but never had a hive successfully overwinter. It was just too expensive to keep buying packages of bees that just died, so we're taking a break. Before this book I was not familiar with the Warré method of keeping bees, but it was very interesting. The Warré hives are built to mimic the size and type of hollow tree wild bees prefer to make their home. The boxes are rotated so that when you harvest honey in the fall you take the top box and in the spring you add an empty box to the bottom. While some aspects of harvesting the honey from the Warré boxes seems complicated, I do like that in theory when you add a box the other boxes will be lighter as the bees consume their honey stores over the winter. With Langstroth hive boxes I can't physically lift them when they are full of bees and honey, but the Warré boxes are smaller, so it might be more doable. There was a lot of good information about catching swarms and not checking on the bees constantly. The bees know what they're doing and we're just trying to provide a suitable home for them and harvest some of their honey as well. This book definitely gives me more ideas about better ways to keep bees when we try again in the future. Anderson also gives full color pictures in the Appendixes if you want to build your own Warré hives.

Some quotes I liked:

"Maverick mycologist Paul Stamets also keeps bees. He noticed that a raised bed of woodchips in which he was growing King Stropharia mushrooms was being visited by his bees - with extraordinary determination they had lifted relatively enormous chips of wood to expose the intricate strands of his mushrooms' mycelium growing below the surface. When he looked he could see that the bees were sucking on little extracellular droplets that the mycelium had exuded like beads of sweat...these droplets contain acids, enzymes, and all sorts of messaging molecules: the mycelium is self-organizing and self-educating - as it grows and penetrates its environment, the tips of the mycelium explore anything new or unfamiliar, and then intelligently change themselves to find solutions to fight new toxins, or build new enzymes to digest new food...But Stamets discovered that the mycelial droplets his bees were so keen on were specifically and spectacularly antiviral too. They upregulated the bees' immune systems." (p. 125-27)

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written exploration of keeping Warre hives, discussing modifications, benefits of that type of hive, and offering an overview of the yearly "life cycle of the hive (and keeper). Critiism of this type of hive is very little in the book, and with my relative inexperience it's difficult to know if that is because of bias or not. The case made for Warre hives is strong, in my estimation, and has me interested in trying it rather than a horizontal "top bar" hive. I'm very uninterested in Langstroth hives and was unaware of the Warre in general.

Worth the read, or at least a peek, if bees are your hobby (or could become your hobby). I particularly appreciated the passing suggestion of having a beehive like one has a birdhouse, that is to say, providing a hive for the bees without actually interfering at all, just giving them a home and letting them do their thing. I don't know if this is really practical or feasible long-term.

[Sky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really fantastic perspective on modern beekeeping and how we might need to change how we're doing things as diseases and bee pests become more of a problem. This kind of beekeeping may be a bit difficult in areas that have rules about swarm control and keeping docile queens (city beekeeping), but something I very much want to try in a more rural setting.

Biggest take-away... we are not beekeepers, we are hive keepers, the bees take care of themselves and can come and go as they please, we just need to give them the best possible chance at survival, and that means making them a healthier home, and making them the strongest they can be!

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was enjoyable to read this book immediately following Frank Mortimer’s Bee People and the Bugs They Love. The two authors (both seasoned beekeepers) have vastly different philosophies on how to keep and raise colonies of bees. Bill Anderson, a TV director for Dr. Who among other things, is an eccentric beekeeper at least in U.S. standards, preferring the Warré hive over the Langstroth. Even though his main argument of hive choice did not convince me, he is an excellent writer and the hive story he weaves is well done.

[Angela Tollerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best beekeeping books I’ve ever read. Incredible amounts of knowledge paired with a whimsical British wit. A great starting place for new and old beekeepers. You don’t have to keep bees in Warre style hives to glean information from this isle approach to a fun hobby we tend to over complicate. Well done!

[Fritz Lausier · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is some good information in this good.

His writing style is half informative and half story telling. For me, I just wanted to get to the pertinent information.

It all depends on what you want as the reader. Still worth the read.

[M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a good read.

[Mary Nee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book! I am interested in bees!

[Matthew Raynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great read about bees and the right or wrong way to be a beekeeper. I am excited about starting my own beehives!

[Katrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an easy and fun read with informative appendices. It almost makes me want to keep bees myself!

[Alli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned a lot :)

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice mix of bee biology, beekeeping how-to, and philosophy. Inspiration for an aspiring beekeeper but also entertaining enough for a layperson to want to read.

[Emily]

A delightful, thoughtful, and informative read on raising bees. I do not plan on raising bees, but it was still an intriguing read that I would recommend to anyone who has an interest in honey bees.

[Jordan Gisch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before this book I knew nothing about beekeeping, but now I want a Warre Hive! There are some weird anecdotes but they do keep the reader engaged.

[Musk Oxennarr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bee a believer.