OK, but beekeeping specifically— I've taken a class and had a look at the literature. Because it's such a compelling and charismatic topic (bees are a symbol

OK, but beekeeping specifically— I've taken a class and had a look at the literature. Because it's such a compelling and charismatic topic (bees are a symbol of eternal life, hard work, etc.) there are A LOT of books out there. One bibliography is included in this PDF by the ScientificBeekeeping.com guy: http://scientificbeekeeping.com/scibeeimages/BEGINNERS-OUTLINE-PDF.pdf http://scientificbeekeeping.com/scibeeimages/BEGINNERS-OUTLI... Some books, like the recent "The Bees" by Laline Paul, take huge narrative liberties and don't really care about the scientific truth. Poetic licence. Beekeepers ostensibly don't have any time for that kind of thing, but... I do think that, at least in my part of the world, people who keep bees often tend to be a bit vague and scatterbrained when it comes to theory. They aren't scientific about their beekeeping—it's more like home cooking. There are superstitions, and rarely enough empirical data in one person's experience to disprove them. It was really off-putting on the course I attended, actually, to have the biological principles of bee colonies explained in such an inept and confused way. The variation, in terms of beekeeping practice, from one person to another is only going to be more arbitrary and quixotic.