Beekeeping Basics

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You will also need a smoker and a hive tool. The smoker is a device for creating puffs of smoke, which reduce the bees' tendency to become alarmed while you are working with them. Although smokers come in a variety of sizes and price ranges, someone with only two to four colonies can get along just fine with the smallest and cheapest.

The hive tool is merely a small pry bar designed specifically for use on beehives. It is a fairly inexpensive tool and indispensable for separating hive parts — such as frames full of honey — which bees often stick together with a resinous substance called propolis, or bee glue, which they collect from the bark and buds of various trees and use to fill crevices and fix and varnish their combs.

What are the Parts of a Beehive?

A beehive consists of supers, covers, bottom board, frames and foundation. The supers, also called hive bodies, are basically wooden boxes without tops or bottoms that are stacked on top of the bottom board and each other to create the hive. A flat piece of wood called an inner cover is placed on top of the uppermost super to close it up, and an outer cover is placed atop the entire hive to make it weather tight. Click here to for a look at how these parts go together.

Ten rectangular wooden frames are inserted into each super and are used to hold sheets of beeswax called foundation. This foundation gives the bees a place to build their wax combs neatly into each frame so that the frames can be removed from the hive for such purposes as harvesting the honey.

Exactly how many supers you will need for each hive depends on where you live and how severe the winters are. In my home state of Ohio, the general practice is to use two deep supers for the bees to live in, and three shallow supers per hive to collect the honey.

In more tropical areas, you may only need one deep super. Although supers come in sizes other than just deep and shallow, deep supers provide ample living space for the bees, and any super larger than a shallow size can become extremely heavy when filled with honey. For my beehives, I use only deep and shallow supers.

What Will I Need in Order to Put Together a Beehive?

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