Honeybee: From Hive to Home, Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper

One woman's charming and personal account of abandoning the rat race to live blissfully as a beekeeper and honey entrepreneur-plus everything you'd ever want to know about bees.

Ten years ago, Marina Marchese fell in love with bees during a tour of a neighbor's honeybee hives. Surprised to find that allowing docile honeybees to crawl across her hands instilled a serene tranquility and comfort, Marina quit her job, acquired her own bees, built her own hives, harvested honey, earned a certificate in apitherapy, studied wine tasting in order to transfer those skills to honey tasting, and eventually opened her own business. Today, Red Bee Honey sells artisanal honey and honey-related products to shops and restaurants all over the country.

Honeybee is not only a warm and inspiring story of one woman's intimate experience with honeybees (arguably the most industrious creatures on earth) but it is also bursting with fascinating and practical information about all aspects of bees, beekeeping, and honey, including life inside the beehive and the role of the queen, drones, and workers; how bees make honey; pollination and its importance in sustaining life; building a beehive; hiving and keeping honeybees; harvesting honey and comb; healing with honey and the practice of apitherapy; and much, much more. Recipes for food, drink, and personal care products are included throughout. Also included is a detailed appendix of 75 different varieties of honey.

"Nine years ago, from her home in Connecticut, Marchese, then a creative director for a giftware company, became a beekeeper and honey entrepreneur. In this engaging, delightfully informative work, she recounts how visits to the apiaries of the neighboring community's Back Yard Beekeepers overcame her initial trepidation of bees as she learned about the industry and craftsmanship of these insects and became bowled over by the taste of fresh honey. Step by step she explains how she got started as a beekeeper, from studying bee anatomy and hive organization, to ordering equipment online such as her Langstroth hive, a smoker (to calm the bees while working) and protective clothing. She had to learn to 'pour' her three pounds of live Italian honeybees into the hive (the first time she got stung six times), while carefully introducing the all-powerful queen. Marchese is fascinated by the marvels of bee behavior — pollen foraging, dances, swarming — and imparts as well a goodly bit of bee history. She offers plenty of her own honey-beeswax concoctions, both edible and cosmetic, with excellent appendixes on the varietals of honey. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Surpassing the predictable how-I-changed-careers memoir of finding the good life, Marchese's informative guide is packed with facts.... Marchese's book offers a bee's-eye view of life inside and outside the hive." Booklist

Marchese, who sells honey and natural products to food shops and restaurants in the US, tells the story of how she left her job to raise Italian honeybees, built her own hives, and began harvesting honey. She soon studied apitherapy and wine tasting to transfer her skills to honey tasting, and launched her own business. In the book, she also details information about all aspects of honeybees, beekeeping, and honey, including their history, the lives of bees, the role of the queen, workers, and drones, pollination, hiving and keeping bees, and healing with honey, pollen, and bee venom. Included are recipes for food and personal care products, and an appendix of 75 different varieties of honey, with food and wine pairings for each. There is no index. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

C. Marina Marchese is the founder and owner of Red Bee Honey, purveyors of honey and honey related products. She has been keeping bees for more than nine years. Marina is certified by the American Apitherapy Society and has trained as a honey Judge at the University of Georgia. She serves on the board of the Back Yard Beekeepers Association in Connecticut. She has written for Bee Culture magazine and the Journal of American Apitherapy Society. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in NYC, she is also an award-winning illustrator and designer.