A Beekeeper's Diary: Self Guide to Keeping Bees

Do you want to be a beekeeper and need help on how to start? And no one is close to help you?

Charlotte Ekker Wiggins has written the definitive guide to beginning beekeeping. This diary will lead you through the basic steps you will need to start, troubleshoot and successfully develop basic beekeeping skills and practices.

The information in this easy to use beginning beekeeping guide, with handy checklists and tips, will answer and guide you in your beginning beekeeping including:

• How to naturally feed your honey bees
• Best beekeeping equipment
• Where to set up your hives
• How to get honey bees
• How to manage pests and diseases

Plus much more including a new comprehensive index!

This diary is unlike any other beginning beekeeping book currently on the market. It has been used for 10 years in Charlotte's beginning beekeeping classes and continues to be used in Charlotte’s classes. It is also approved for use with Great Plains Master Beekeeping Program classes and certified as offering scientifically-based, best management practices.

"You have revolutionized how beginning beekeeping is being taught," said Kim Flotum, retired Bee Culture Magazine editor June 14, 2021.

When she first decided to keep honey bees, Charlotte was like many beginning beekeepers; scared to death. She wanted bees just for pollination. Her initial plan was to settle hives in a back garden corner and coexist. She didn't count on falling in love.

Honey bees are the most amazing little creatures and part of the tiny bug world that forms the foundation of our interdependent ecosystems. Their declining numbers, what that means to the world's food supply and what we can all do to help them was the topic of her Missouri S&T TEDx April 11, 2019 "Why Bugs Matter.'

Charlotte began teaching beginning beekeeping in 2012 at the request of her local Extension Office. In 2014, students from one of her beginning beekeeping classes asked for a local club to support them and the Rolla Bee Club was started. In 2019, Rolla Bee Club officially became an educational non-profit club.

Charlotte has a master's degree in management from Webster University, St. Louis. She is a Great Plains Master Beekeeping program certified master beekeeper. She is also a contributing author master gardener representative on Missouri's Master Pollinator Steward Program Steering Committee, developed under the University of Missouri College of Natural Resources. The award-winning program, started in 2016 and launched in 2019, is designed to teach the general public about the value of pollinators and what they can do to help them. 

In 2022, Charlotte was awarded a Missouri State Beekeepers Association lifetime achievement award for her contribution to beekeepers.

Charlotte lives with rescue cats on a one-acre Missouri limestone hillside garden. The garden is a certified wildlife habitat, Monarch Way station and working apiary.