BeeBookThe Apiary Journal
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The BeeBook Journal
Seasonal checklists, varroa strategy, and quiet essays from the apiary — published twice a week, written by people who keep bees and read the research.
Latest from the apiary
A fresh post every Tuesday and Friday — long reads on Tuesdays, checklists and field notes on Fridays.
Featured · Varroa Strategy
Twelve minutes of careful observation in February tells you more than a full inspection in April. Here is the field method our advisory board uses to predict which colonies will make it to spring — and what to do for the ones that won't.
Seasonal Checklist
A printed-and-pinned list for the back of your hive tool.
Founder Essay
Maria on the 1962 inspection book we still keep on the kitchen shelf.
Equipment & Gear
A buyer's note from the BeeBook master beekeeper advisory.
Four recurring columns
The Journal runs on a steady rhythm. Pick the columns that match the beekeeper you are this year — and we'll send the rest to your reading list, not your inbox.
Twice-monthly field lists timed to your climate zone — what to inspect, what to feed, when to reverse, when to stop opening hives.
Browse checklists → 02Treatment explainers, threshold math, and resistance maps — drawn from the largest crowd-sourced varroa dataset in North America.
Open the strategy desk → 03Maria Lindqvist writes monthly about the craft, the business, and the long arc of keeping bees — letters from a third-generation apiary in Minneapolis.
Read the essays → 04Honest reviews of hive tools, suits, scales, and sensors — tested in cold Minnesota winters and humid Florida summers.
See the gear notes →From the editor
Dear reader,
The Journal started as a one-page PDF we emailed to our first 200 customers in the spring of 2019 — a printed-and-folded seasonal checklist with a hand-drawn map of varroa treatment windows. It was a way to say: we are keeping bees too, here is what we are doing this week, take what helps.
Seven years later, that is still the brief. The Journal is not a content-marketing funnel. It is not a list of SEO-optimized answers to questions you asked a search engine. It is the same letter we have always written, just with better photographs and a Tuesday-and-Friday schedule.
This winter we are running a long series on reading the cluster — what you can learn in twelve minutes of standing still at a hive in February, before you ever crack a box. We are also publishing the first entries from our master beekeeper advisory board, eleven beekeepers with a combined 240 years of field experience who now read everything we publish before it goes out.
If you keep a hive — or fifteen — we hope you find something here that earns the next twelve minutes of your afternoon.
Warmly,
Maria Lindqvist
Co-founder, BeeBook · Third-generation beekeeper, Minneapolis
The proof behind the writing
28%
Reduction in winter colony losses in a 2-year study with the University of Florida Honey Bee Research & Extension Lab.
ABF '24
Winner of the American Beekeeping Federation's Innovation in Apiary Technology award.
11
Certified master beekeepers on our advisory board, with 240+ combined years of field experience.
320+
Field-tested essays, checklists, and treatment explainers published since 2019 — written for the bench, not the brochure.
Featured in Bee Culture, American Bee Journal, and The Hive Life as 'Best Beekeeping App' in 2023 and 2024, and in The New York Times 'App that saved a hobby' segment, May 2024.
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