Description
This book was conceived following work carried out in pursuit of the UK National Diploma in Beekeeping. As a UK programme, the NDB necessarily focuses on a select group of plant species which are key to honey bees in the British Isles. However those plants that are of value to honey bees are often equally valuable to other UK pollinators and so of interest to anyone who has a love of insects, or indeed, botany. The original work contained pressed botanical samples; these have been scanned to high resolution for inclusion in this book, preserving much of the detail that would be lost in either photographs or illustrations. Those scans are augmented by photographs of each species at different life stages and photomicrographs of the pollen from each species. This is brought together with information around the plant families, ecology, and for the beekeepers’ benefit, potential for honey production.
