The complete and easy guide to beekeeping - Kim Flottum

This revised and expanded edition of The Complete & Easy Guide to Beekeeping gives you even more information on greening your beekeeping with sustainable practices, pesticide-resistant bees, and urban and suburban beekeeping.

The Complete and Easy Guide to Beekeeping makes the time-honoured and complex tradition of beekeeping an enjoyable and accessible pastime that will appeal to gardeners, crafters and cooks everywhere. More than a guide to beekeeping, it is a handbook for harvesting the products of a beehive, a honey cookbook and more
all in one lively beautifully illustrated reference.

If you want beekeeping done right, it wont be fast. However, beekeeping takes about the same investment in time and care as gardening, dovetails nicely with the planting and harvesting seasons and provides bonuses for gardeners that include better pollination.