Bee Books, People & Projects
A living library of books, teachers, sanctuaries, conservation work, and Tending the Sacred Hive alumni
Beekeeping knowledge does not belong to one teacher, one hive design, one book, or one school of thought.
The resources gathered here have helped me understand bees biologically, ecologically, culturally, practically, and spiritually.
Some have directly shaped my own beekeeping. Others have challenged me to examine familiar practices from another perspective. Still others are carrying bee-centered work into art, education, habitat restoration, research, community, and sacred practice.
Beekeeping is a practical art, but it is also biological, ecological, historical, political, and deeply cultural.
The books I value most help us observe more carefully. They deepen our understanding of the hive as intelligent, sovereign being. They also challenge inherited assumptions, and expand the ways we imagine relationship with bees.
Part of becoming a thoughtful beekeeper is learning to read critically: gathering what is useful, questioning what is presented as inevitable, and returning again and again to the bees themselves.
My Beekeeping Bookshelf
- Natural and bee-centered beekeeping
- Honeybee biology and behavior
- Top-bar, log, and alternative hive designs
- Wild and free-living honeybee colonies
- Pollinator ecology and habitat
- Biodynamic and holistic bee care
- Bee folklore, mythology, and sacred traditions
- Honey, beeswax, propolis, and the gifts of the hive
- Women and underrepresented voices in beekeeping
- Children’s books about bees
My reading lists include books on:
Whenever possible, I link through Bookshop.org to support independent bookstores.
I also maintain an Amazon list for readers who need that option or cannot find a particular title elsewhere.
Affiliate disclosure: Some book links on this page are affiliate links. If you purchase through one of them, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
I love the bee community. Bee people a fiercely loving group of varied backgrounds and beliefs.
There is a growing global network of bee people who are asking questions about who the bees are in the wild, what learning from bees might look like, and what it means to step away from human-centred extraction practices and toward a reciprocal relationship.
Here are some of the good folks I’ve been inspired by over the years:
People and Projects I Recommend
Ang Roell brings beekeeping into conversation with ecology, queen rearing, education, community resilience, and social justice.
I appreciate the ways Ang and They Keep Bees challenge narrow assumptions about who belongs in beekeeping, who holds expertise, and what a more inclusive and locally responsive apiary culture can become.
Their work is especially valuable for beekeepers interested in resilient local stock, community-based learning, and the social structures surrounding our relationships with bees.
Ang Roell and They Keep Bees
Apis Arborea invites beekeepers and conservationists to consider honeybees within the wider ecology of forests, tree cavities, natural nesting habitat, and free-living colonies.
Their work moves the conversation beyond the managed hive and asks what species-appropriate habitat might require from humans.
I value the questions their work raises about conservation, wilding, nesting freedom, and the difference between keeping bees and creating conditions in which bees may live more fully according to their own nature.
Apis Arborea
Spikenard Farm brings honeybee care into relationship with biodynamic agriculture, education, sanctuary, and the tending of the wider landscape.
Their work offers an important example of treating gardens, forage, soil, water, and seasonal cycles as inseparable from the life of the colony.
Rather than approaching the hive as an isolated agricultural unit, Spikenard encourages a more holistic understanding of the bees within the living ecology surrounding them
Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary
The Ambeessadors bring people together through bees, education, events, creative projects, collaboration, and public engagement.
Their work helps the bee conversation move beyond individual apiaries and into culture, art, research, storytelling, and collective action.
I value projects that allow bees to become a meeting place between disciplines rather than confining them to agriculture alone.
The Ambeessadors
BeeWisdom explores the relationships between bees, ecology, education, healing, art, community, intuition, and spiritual practice.
Their work may be especially meaningful for people who experience bees not only as animals to be studied or managed, but as beings with whom attention, respect, and relationship can be cultivated.
BeeWisdom offers a wider field in which ecological knowledge and less tangible forms of human experience can be held in conversation.
BeeWisdom
Spikenard Farm brings honeybee care into relationship with biodynamic agriculture, education, sanctuary, and the tending of the wider landscape.
Their work offers an important example of treating gardens, forage, soil, water, and seasonal cycles as inseparable from the life of the colony.
Rather than approaching the hive as an isolated agricultural unit, Spikenard encourages a more holistic understanding of the bees within the living ecology surrounding them
Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary
Free-Living Bees gathers resources and projects concerned with honeybee colonies living outside direct human management.
Their work broadens the beekeeping conversation to include natural nesting sites, forest ecology, habitat conservation, citizen observation, and the lives of colonies beyond the apiary.
This perspective matters because honeybees do not exist only where humans place boxes for them. Understanding free-living colonies can deepen our questions about adaptation, health, nesting preference, and what honeybee conservation might actually involve.
Free-Living Bees
