More Than You Probably Ever Cared To Know About Bee Equipment

I have lived my whole life in the middle of town until we moved to what I call "the country" 18 months ago. And by "country" I mean our beautiful spacious 2 1/2 acres in the neighborhood where my rooster bothers the neighbors and we have to use a riding lawn mower. I couldn't love it more.

And part of my country love is our bees.

Today we worked our big hive.  I've found I can do it best with 2 helpers.  The supers are heavy and the propolis makes everything hard and sticky and requires a lot of strength and prying.  Beekeeeping requires a lot of physical labor. 

So here's what happens every time I check our bees.  I look for patterning and spacing and signs of pests.  But I can never make a decision about anything on the spot.  So frustrating!  I put everything back to together, ask my bee people questions, and think about it for 2 days before I decide anything.  

One of the things I'm looking forward to is growing to the point of being able to make a confident decision immediately.  Also of having NO fear.  Generally speaking, I'm not afraid to work the bees.  But if I have a one that gets through my gear, that kinda freaks me out.  I had on 2 pairs of pants and felt one crawling up my leg while we were looking at frames.  And since bees sting when they are in danger, I knew I was in for it.  But once I put the frame down I called a time out and brushed it off.  I didn't look closely but I'm guessing that must've been a drone to not sting.  

I've been getting some questions about how expensive beekeeping is and I thought I'd give you a small run down of what you can see in the picture.  But really, everything about bees is expensive and that's why honey costs so much.  A lot of beekeepers save money by building their own equipment.

~The piece I am holding is called a frame and that is where bees do all their work.  There are 10 of them inside each box.   Notice how the white box is smaller than the yellow one?  It's called a shallow super and the only reason it's smaller is for weight issues and ease of handling.  A full honey super weighs around 100 pounds.  A lot of women and older beekeepers are even moving toward 8 frame equipment instead of 10 to be able to handle them easier.  I'm sure I will do that at some point.

~What you can't see is that we also have a medium box that we moved over to the side.  So this hive is 3 boxes tall.  (medium and shallow full of frames about $50)

~The metal smoker is hanging on the side by a clip.  This is a nice feature because it's makes smoking hands-free.  ($35)

~The thin piece between the boxes is our queen excluder.  It keeps the queen on the bottom so I don't need to guess where she is and there is no brood or eggs in the honey.  ($15)

~The yellow box is called a deep.  It's the biggest they make.  It's the brood chamber where the queen lays all the eggs and the nurse bees care for the brood.  ($100 with lid and bottom board) 

~Underneath is a screened bottom board.  This keeps the hive off the ground which helps with predators and pests.  And the screened part helps with ventilation and mites and hive beetles.  

~On top of everything is a lid.  It's not in the pictures but right now I'm using a feeder lid.  It holds 2 quart sized jars of feed.  It's been on there for 2 weeks and the bees haven't touched it.  But just as I was ready to remove it, they started eating it.  Next time I'll probably remove it since there should be a lot more flowers blooming.  ($20)

~A new hive will also need a entrance reducer. ($10) 

~In the summer you will need to install a vented inner cover. ($20)  

~A package of bees or a split from a beekeeper ($100-150)  

And then there is gear and tools and extracting equipment.  I've been adding to our collection slowly as we certainly don't have it all.  This year I'm hoping to purchase an extractor ($250) so I don't have to borrow one every time.  We'll see.  

Except for the gear, smoker, and hive tool I have bought everything locally from a member of our bee club that has a side business of building bee equipment.  This saves me shipping and his prices are about the same or cheaper than ordering from the bee companies.  

So there ya have it!  And today my bees looked fantastic and happy.  We also looked into the nuc to see how the split is doing and saw some pretty nice looking queen cells.  So hopefully within the next few days we will have a strong queen and be well on our way to establishing a new hive.  

At this point I'm hoping for quite a bit of honey from the big hive.  I will keep it large instead of splitting and will do another split next year.  As for the nuc, I don't expect honey but the goal is to establish numbers and strength.  

Praying for a great honey flow!!