The Backyard Beekeeping Timeline
A Week-by-Week Beginner's Guide to Your First Year with Bees, from Ordering Your Colony to Your First Honey Harvest
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Your first year with bees, week by week: from ordering your colony in winter to a strong hive going into its first winter.
Most beekeeping books are organized by topic. The Backyard Beekeeping Timeline is organized by time, so you always know what to do this week. Everything is counted from one date: Bee Day, the day your package or nuc arrives.
- The Winter Countdown: local rules and registration, packages or nucs, equipment, choosing the spot and keeping the neighbors happy
- Bee Day: installing a package or a nuc, step by step
- The first month: the queen check, feeding, and why every package shrinks before it grows
- How to inspect a hive and read a frame: eggs, brood, pollen, honey and queen cells
- Swarm watch: adding space, spotting swarm cells and what to do
- Varroa mites: how to count them, the thresholds to act on, and how to choose a treatment safely
- Summer, fall and winter: supers, robbing, pests, winter stores and the mouse guard
- Honey: when to harvest, and why first-year honey usually belongs to the bees
- Troubleshooting, who to call, the whole first year on one page, and five fill-in worksheets
Every number is drawn from university extension guidance, the Honey Bee Health Coalition and state agriculture departments, with sources listed.
Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed in the book.
Seedlark Garden Guides is a Woguru imprint for practical, week-by-week home and garden handbooks. Every number is drawn from university extension research, with sources listed in each book.
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