Beekeeping Equipment

Like all hobbies, beekeeping requires some basic equipment before someone can establish a successful beehive. The most obvious piece of equipment you will need is the actual beehive along with a protective suit to manage the bees. Once you acquire a beehive for your honeybees make sure you place it somewhere that is a flat surface so that the beehive wont tip over in a strong thunderstorm. Also, make sure that you place it somewhere where people and animals aren't likely to disturb it as well.

Your beehive should have at least five supers. Supers are a very important component of the beehive because this is where the honeybees will be producing and storing their honey. The five supers should be between the bottom of the hive and the corner of the beehive. A spacer board is a piece of equipment beekeeper's use to keep an equal amount of space between the frames while they are in the super.

Once you have an active beehive, each of these supers should contain nine to ten frames. You can choose to have shallow supers or deep supers within the beehive. The advantage of deep supers it allows beekeeper's to buy only one size bee foundation. The disadvantage, when full, a deep super can weigh nearly seventy pounds.

The next piece of beekeeping equipment you will need to have onsite is a smoker. The smoker is what allows beekeepers to get the honey bees to leave the beehive when you are getting ready to extract the honey. A beekeeping smoker is a simple design that consists of consists of a funnel, a combustion chamber, and bellows.

Many beekeeper's say that a burlap sack is the best material to use in the smoker because the burlap is easy to ignite because it smolders and smokes. Other beekeeper's prefer to use dried corn cobs with the smoker. Once the fire has been lit in the combustion chamber, the bellows will keep it going. The funnel directs the smoke into the beehive, encouraging the honey bees to leave the beehive.

Another simple tool you will need is a metal beehive tool. The metal beehive tool is used to pry open the beehive, separate the beehive bodies, and to scrape the frames clean. Think of it as the all-purpose tool of beekeeping with many uses.

No beekeeper is ready to receive their shipment of honeybees until they have a bee brush. A honeybee brush is used to gently brush honeybees out of the way so that the beekeeper can examine the frames. So you should have one of these brushes in your beekeeping arsenal.

When it is time to recover your honey, you will need a fumer board. A fumer board is covered in bee removing chemicals and is used to encourage the honeybees to leave a super to allow you to recover their honey.

If you don't mind getting used equipment you can find some great prices on beekeeping equipment on Ebay. There are several catalogs and websites that offer beekeeping equipment, and many of those offer beginners packages that allow for a quick and easy setup.

Below you can find some great deals on beekeeping products: