Essential Equipment For Keeping Bees

There are a few items of basic equipment used by every beekeeper.

It is not necessary to buy too much equipment when you are starting out.

You only need a few essential items.

Almost all beekeepers wear protective clothing to prevent bee stings.

When you are starting out it is likely you will get stung no matter what you wear.

As you gain experience you will be stung less often, and experienced beekeepers can wear less protective clothing.

A bee suit is a pair of white cover-alls with elastic to stop bees climbing in through the open cuffs and pant-legs.

Bees are attracted to bright colors, and usually ignore the color white.

Baggy bee-suits help keep bee stingers away from the skin.

Hats for beekeeping have a veil of screen mesh that keeps bees away from the face.

Bee stings on the neck and face are painful and can be dangerous.

The swelling caused by a sting might restrict your breathing or your sight.

Strong gloves with gauntlets are usually essential equipment for new bee-keepers.

Household rubber gloves may work, but bees may be able to sting through them.

A bee smoker creates puffs of smoke to calm the bees when you are working with them.

The smoke makes the bees easier to handle.

The smoke masks the chemical alarm messages given off by the bees when you open the hive.

Most bee-smokers these days have a bellows mechanism.

Each blast of the bellows provides of fresh air to the fuel inside and creates a puff of smoke.

Bee-keepers use a small pry-bar called a hive tool when they work on their beehives.

A hive tool is the all-purpose tool of beekeeping, and used to separate and scrape clean the frames of honey.

Bees collect resin from trees that they use as a glue to stick together the frames.

A bee-feeder is used to supplement the food that bees gather for themselves.

A bee-feeder supplies the hive with drops of sugar syrup from a reservoir that goes on top of the hive.

Many bee-keepers feed their new colonies of bees to give them a good start.

Bees will need feeding before winter and can need top-up feeds at other times as well.