To Bee or Not To Bee: What Equipment You Need To Keep Bees

A checklist of what you'll need to buy if you want to keep bees.

In my post "It was meant to Bee" I described why I decided to take the plunge and become a bee keeper.  In this post, I will describe the equipment you need to buy if you are considering doing the same. 

Caveat Emptor

Some beekeeping catalogs and online retailers offer "beginner kits" to get you started.  When I shopped around, I found that to keep costs low, they sometimes left items out that you technically don't need to begin beekeeping, but are so fundamental that you really have to buy them in addition to the kit. 

For example, you don't need a second deep hive box or a medium honey super to get started, but if you want you're bees to live more than a few months, and you want to collect honey for yourself, you are going to need to buy these and other items.  For that reason, I think they should be included in any "beginner kit" and I've listed them as essential items.

To make things easy for anyone considering bee keeping, I'm going to list individual components so that you have a checklist to compare against when you look at these beginner kits, or if you want to just buy the components separately.

The punchline is that the costs will come in around $400-$500.  This does not include any of the items you will  need to harvest the honey at the end of the season (honey comb knife, extraction pans, etc).  I'll cover that in a future post.

Here's your checklist:

• One Hive Stand - your hive will sits on top of this.
• One Bottom Board - This forms the floor of your hive.  In my case, I purchased a screened bottom board.  The screening allows for additional air circulation and plays an important part in ridding the hive of varroa mites should they infect your hive.  I recommend getting the screened board.
• One entrance reducer (Not shown) - this is a small piece of wood that reduces the hive opening to allow just one or two bees to enter or leave at a time.  You need one of these when the hive population is low (when your first starting our and also in the winter) It helps reduce the likelihood that yellow jackets or wild bees can enter your hive.
• 2 Deep Hive Bodies (1 Shown) - The deep hive bodies are where the queen rears her brood and where your bees store the honey they need to survive.  When you first start your hive, you use one deep hive body.  This is adequate for the 3,000 bees that you get when you place your bee package order.  But the hive will eventually grow to 40,000 bees or more.  You'll need a second deep hive body which you'll stack on top of the first later in the season as the hive population increases.
• 20 Deep Hive Frames - these are wooden frames that can be inserted into the hive body.  It's where the bees will build comb for rearing new bees, storing honey etc.
• 20 Deep Hive Foundations - The bees will need a starting point to build the comb. The foundation is made of either real bee's wax or plastic.  The foundation acts like a template for the bees who build up wax on the foundation to make the honey comb.  I choose wax foundation because I read that the bees take to this more readily than plastic.  However, you'll find plenty of folks who swear by plastic.  The choice is yours.
  
• 1 Medium Hive Body/Honey Super (not shown) - This looks like the deep hive body but it is not as tall.  You stack this on top of the second hive body.  This is like the attic for the hive.  When the bees have filled the bottom two hive bodies with brood and honey, they move to the medium hive body to store excess honey.  This is the honey that you will harvest for yourself.  A medium honey super will hold about 25 pounds of honey. In moderate climates, beekeeper can use two medium hive bodies on their hives and harvest 40-50 pounds of honey.
• 9 Medium Hive Body Frames - looks just like the deep hive frame but is shorter to fit into the medium hive body.  Medium hive bodies take 9 frames, not 10. 
• 9 medium hive foundations.
• 116 foundation pins - used to pin the foundation into the frames.  You need 4 pins for each frame.
• 1 Inner Cover - Under normal conditions, this gets placed on top of the highest hive body in the stack to cover the bees.
• 1 Metal Covered Outer Cover (not shown) - this fits over the inner cover and shields the hive from rain.
• 1 Queen Excluder - This looks like the wire frame that sit on your barbecue grill.  You place this in between the second deep hive body and the medium hive body/honey super.  The metal bars are spaced so that worker bees can get through them, but the queen, which is thicker than a worker bee, can not.  By placing the excluder between the deep hive and the honey super, you prevent the queen from entering the honey super and laying eggs there. You want to exclude the queen from the honey super because you don't want brood in the comb from which you intend to harvest your share of the honey.
  
• 1 Hive Tool (not shown) - an all purpose tool that is like a crowbar.  You'll need this to open the top of the hive and pry out the frames (Bees fill small gaps in the hive with propolis, a substance made from resinous trees like pine trees.  Propolis is very stick and tends to glue hive covers and frames together.  You'll need a tool to open them up when you inspect your hive, collect honey etc.)
• 1 Feeder - When you first get your bees, they will immediately begin to build comb and to seek out nectar.  However, there will not be sufficient food for them in the beginning, so you need to help tide them over until the hive is more established.  You do this by feeding them sugar water which is stored in a feeder unit.  There are a number of feeder options to choose from.  I choose a hive top feeder because it holds 3 gallons of sugar water -- alot so I don't have to re-fill the feeder very often.
  
• 1 Smoker (not shown)- This looks like a bellows unit attached to a can.  You put wood, twine or other substances in the container, light with a hand torch and use the bellows unit to create smoke.  You use the smoke to calm the bees prior to opening up the hive.  Actually, calm is not really what they feel.  The bees smell the smoke and think a forest fire is occurring. They respond to this by drinking up honey in case they need to flee the hive.  Stuffed with honey, they are less likely to sting the beekeeper.
• Bee Hat & Veil (not shown) -  I bought this along with a jacket.  This is a white outfit that makes you look like the Good Humor Man but protects your face and body from any angry bees.  It lowers the possibility that you will be stung.  
• Gloves (not shown) - white leather gloves that protect your hands.
• Bee Brush (not shown) - a brush that helps shoo bees from comb, yourself, frames etc.
• One Frame Grip - like a set of pliers that helps you lift the frames out of the hive box.
• One Frame Rest - This is a metal device that hangs on the edge of the hive box with two metal arms that protrude outward.  When you remove frames for inspection, you can conveniently place them on this hanger, versus putting them on the ground.  Technically, you don't "need" one of these, but they are so convenient I think they are worth putting on your list.

I purchased all my bee keeping supplies from Bee Commerce.  However, other suppliers I know of include: GloryBee, Dadant, Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, Mann Lake, and Walter Kelley.

If you are an experienced bee keeper, please feel free to post a comment with any advice you have for those purchasing for the first time.

If you decide to take the plunge and become a bee keeper, also let me know by posting a comment.

 
 

Comments

[Sheryl Cole]

this question is for the experts out there. can you please help me? im one of the newbie bee keepers, i just started last month. i already have my bee hive and my healthy bees. but they are not as active as they used to be when i bought them. can someone please tell me the problem?

[H. Mark Delman]

Hi Sheryl:

I had a similar problem earlier this year. I noticed one of my hives went from very high activity to almost nothing overnight.
The problem was that the hive had swarmed and there was no queen in the old hive. I had to buy a new queen and install her.
As a first step, I would suggest checking you periodically to see if there are eggs and brood or perhaps queen cells (new queen on the way). I would also recommend posting this same question to a bee specific forum such as Bee Source-- http://www.beesource.com/forums -- to see if you can get some other ideas.