# What I Read and Watched While the World Was Closed

*Post 4 of 29 in the AZ Hive series*

There were no bee club meetings to attend.

Spring 2020 was a strange time to start a new hobby. The places where beginners usually learn — club meetings, mentor visits, hands-on workshops — were all shut down. I went where I could.

YouTube first. There’s a lot of bad bee advice on YouTube, but also a remarkable amount of good content from beekeepers who’ve been doing this for decades. The four channels I leaned on most were Frederick Dunn, Barn Yard Bees, A Canadian Beekeeper’s Blog, and the University of Guelph Honey Bee Research Centre. In addition, the videos on honey bee cutouts from buildings and trees gave a lot of insight. Watch with the entrance and comb layout in mind. If that’s how feral bees build it, it’s probably what bees want.

Two books carried more weight than the rest. *Beekeeping for Dummies* is exactly what it says — the basics, framed for someone who has never opened a hive. *Honeybee Democracy* by Thomas Seeley is a different kind of book, less how-to and more why — Seeley spent his career studying how a swarm collectively decides where to live, and after reading it you don’t look at a swarm trap the same way again.

Between the videos and the books, I learned enough to be dangerous, then a little more, then a little more.

About then I started wondering whether the standard Langstroth was the hive I actually wanted to use.

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**Next:** *Why I Started Looking Beyond Langstroth* — when lifting heavy supers stops feeling like an investment and starts feeling like a problem.