This book concentrates on one type of Hive, the lanstroth, which world wide is the most popular hive, but in the UK most beekeepers use the national, but this make no diffrence at all they are based on the same principals.

It gives you practical advice, on silly things that you dont want to ask, i.e. how do you start your smoker and, what is a smoker.

The book is very easy to read and comprehensive, for keeping bees on a small scale this is the book I would happily recormend, and fequently refer to.

If you do really get into bees the British Bee Keepers (to whom i now belong) recormended reading - Ted Hoopers Bees & honey. This is the next stage, this book covers everything there is, although again you will find that most of the bee keepers will frequently disagree with both books.

Oh and the bears, this is refered to as a common problem it appears that bears do like honey. The book is rather clear on this that you should protect your hives from bears.