Installing Your Bees

Now that you have all of your equipment it is time to move in your bees!

Bees are best installed in the evening, because like you, they like to go home at night.  The easiest way for me to explain installing your bees is to just post this video...as they say a picture is worth a thousand words.  I believe in this case they are correct!

Stuff You Need to Start Beekeeping

Here is a list of equipment you will need to begin your beekeeping adventure...

For one hive
2 large hive bodies (called boxes or supers)
1 top
1 bottom
20 frames
20 pieces of foundation
1 smoker (you can use weeds or pine cones for fuel or buy fuel)

You will need omething to set your hive on to keep out rodents and critters - I use cinder blocks or wood pallets.  You don't really want your hive to be very tall because they get heavy. You will be stacking honey supers on top of the body supers and it will be awkward trying to remove the honey from that height.

For protective gear:

1 bee suit (or use white coveralls)
1 hat n veil (you can use a brimmed straw hat and just buy the veil)
1 pair gloves (you can use latex gloves and just tuck your sleeves into them
1 pair boots (so you can tuck your pants into them)

Be prepared, as soon as you get everything on including the veil, you nose will itch. It happens to me every time.

Simple Beekeeping

Beekeeping is a fascinating hobby.  Not only can you learn about nature, but you get to help your garden provide wonderful produce and beautiful flowers.

If you are just starting out the best advice I can give you is to get Beekeeping For Dummies and join your local beekeeping club.  People who keep bees are mostly a friendly and informative group.  They will share with  you equipment that is discounted, you can get bees to start with and you can get help with trouble shooting your hive problems.

The really nice thing that I have found is that they won't laugh at you if you do silly things, like say, not putting foundation in your frames before you install your bees.