How To Start Beekeeping

Have you been dreaming of bees in your backyard and have no idea where to start? I can help with that!

It's been a dream of mine to have honey bees on our homestead since before we even had a homestead. Kevy and I often daydreamed of a more self-sufficient home and bees always had a place on my wish list.

Nearly 10 years after my first declaration of undying bee love, a local beekeeping club was formed, Kevy started the ball rolling for us to join, and it was a catalyst for us to jump into beekeeping with our whole hearts.

They've become such an important part of my life, I don't think I could ever live without our bees again!

Jump to:

• A Reality Check
• First Things First
• Step 1: Check Local Bylaws
• Step 2: Learn About Honey Bees
• Step 3: Pick A Suitable Location
• Step 4: Aquire Equipment
• Step 4a: Prepare Your Equipment
• Step 5: Decide How You Want Your Bees
• Step 6: Have A Plan For Harvesting Honey
• Step 7: Get Started
• Thoughts From The Homestead Apiary
• Comments

A Reality Check

Before we get too far into the meat and potatoes of beekeeping and where to start, I think it's important to add a bit of reality for context.

Don't get into bees because honey is expensive. Raising honey bees is way more expensive.

It's not always blossoms and sweet tasting, sometimes it's sweating through your beesuit during inspections, worrying about hive health, and carrying very heavy stuff! (no seriously.)

Potential beekeeps must acknowledge that beekeeping is an investment, both in dollars and in time. This hobby is cost front loaded, but the expenses don't completely disappear once the equipment has been acquired - there are continued costs when it comes to your hives.

First Things First

This one is often overlooked, but ensure that you do NOT have an anaphylactic allergy to bees. Despite your best efforts, you can and will be stung by your bees at some point.

Ask your general practitioner about having an allergy test done.

I personally react pretty strongly to bee stings, but thankfully it's just swelling and discomfort and not life threatening.

Step 1: Check Local Bylaws

It's important to establish that you're even able to keep bees before you go any further down the rabbit hole.

This can include checking your local bylaws, or contacting your municipality, city, or HOA.

If there are bylaws regarding bees, they are important to note later on as they may set a hive limit, or have placement requirements.

Step 2: Learn About Honey Bees

There is a learning curve when it comes to keeping bees, and it's steep, but there are ways to mitigate that problem.

• Join a local beekeeping association: This was the major tipping point for Kevy and I. Spending time with the local club enabled us to learn a ton, get hands on experience before working with our own bees, and save a small amount on some of our equipment through group buys.
• Take a beekeeping course: There is so much to learn about bees. They'll help you differentiate bee bread from royal jelly, teach you about castes and swarming, how to split and monitor the hive's health. I prefer in person learning, but there are tons of online beekeeping courses that can help too!
• Get a local mentor: Maybe you'll get lucky like we did, and you'll very casually adopt an experienced member of your club or association! Local mentors are incredibly beneficial because they understand your local climate, nectar flow, seasonal timing, and challenges.
• Watch some YouTube! University of Guelph has an excellent beekeeping channel, and we love watching their videos. Shameless plug, we have a video of our first honey harvest, and I hope to add more beekeeping content as time allows!

While our beekeeping course taught us a ton of theoretical information, our local beekeeping club was by far the best investment in our knowledge. The hands on experience in simple things like picking up frames and assembling the hives was so beneficial as new beekeepers, while the more involved skills like what to do during a hive inspection, doing mite washes, and harvesting and extracting honey have been invaluable in our journey.

You just don't know what you don't know, and we all start somewhere!

Step 3: Pick A Suitable Location

We struggled mightily when it came to picking the location of our hives. Ultimately, we are happy with the placement of our apiary, but it took a lot of discussions before we made a final decision.

Here are the important consideration:

• entrances south facing
• protected from prevailing winds
• level
• quiet
• near a water source
• unobstructed fight path
• meets local bylaws
• protected from predators

Our hives are placed with the entrances facing south east, so they receive warming sunshine in the morning to help get their day started and backed against the forest on the north and west which provides them shade in the afternoons helping to moderate temperatures in the hives. The placement with the back of the hives up against the forest helps to protect the hives from the prevailing winds blowing into the entrances.

Honey bees prefer to be in a quiet corner of your yard, away from high traffic areas, and prefer unobstructed flight paths directly out from their hives. We placed them in a niche on the edge of the yard, facing the forest, giving them about a 60 foot flight path which is plenty of space to land and take off without obstacles in their way.

Bees are thirsty little workers during the heat of summer and they go through a lot of water when cooling the hives, so it's important to place them near a water source. Our bee hives face a pond just 50 or so feet from the entrances, I also keep a full chicken waterer with rocks in the basin directly in front of the hives through the warm months - topping up as required.

If you have a pool, you'll want to ensure that the bees have at least a couple of water sources nearer to them than the pool, cause they tend to love pool water. Unfortunately, they can easily drown in the pool water, so it's best to keep them away.

Choosing a level location can help your bees winter more easily as they'll be less likely to suffer moisture problems in the hive. You can benefit from a level spot too! Lifting heavy honey supers and moving around in an un-level area can spell injury and damaged equipment from a slip or trip.

Honey bees are pretty hardy but bees need to be protected from predators. Here, our largest concern is hungry bears coming out of hibernation but you might have a problem with mice, skunks, or racoons. They should be placed in an area that they can be protected, either via electric fence, solid fence, or other barrier.

Step 4: Aquire Equipment

I've said it before and I'll say it again, beekeeping is an expensive hobby. It requires upfront investment in supplies and equipment and ongoing investment for the health and maintenance of your hives.

We were recommended to start with two hives and I'm really glad that we did, as this allowed us to "borrow" from the stronger hive to bolster the weaker hive. It would have also allowed us to continue our beekeeping journey if one of the hives didn't survive the harsh winter.

Here's a quick breakdown of the beekeeping supplies and equipment you'll need to get started with two hives and 2 beekeepers:

• 2x bottom board
• 2x entrance reducer
• 4x deep super (for brood)
• 40x deep frames, black
• 4x medium super (for honey)
• 40x medium frames, white
• 2x inner cover
• 2x telescoping cover
• 2x queen excluder
• 2x feeders
• 2x leather beekeeping gloves
• 2x beekeeping suits
• 2x J hook
• 1x smoker
• 2x mite treatements
• 1x mite check tool
• 2x winter wrap
• miscellaneous items, like hive paint etc.
• drawn comb - if you can find from another beekeeper
• hive stand

Does that list seem overwhelming? It can be! And it doesn't even include the bees, or honey extracting equipment yet! Full disclosure, at this point, with our 4 hives, extracting equipment and all my other tools and supplies, we have almost $6500 dollars invested.

Now you know why beekeepers say that if you're not passionate about bees you should just buy honey!

We chose to support local whenever possible in our supplies purchases, so if you're an aspiring western Canadian beekeeper, all of our wooden ware came from Andresen Apiaries. Our bees came from the Calgary Beekeeping Association, and the remaining stuff came from Worker and Hive.

Step 4a: Prepare Your Equipment

Raw wooden ware comes in both assembled and disassembled versions - personally, I like to hit the easy button and buy the assembled boxes, but they aren't all that difficult to put together.

Once assembled, the exterior of the wooden hive needs to be painted! I use an ultra low VOC exterior primer and paint. This is an important step for your hives and helps to ensure your supers last longer, as they are exposed to the elements 365 days a year. Avoid painting anywhere on the inside of the hive that the bees touch, including the lips of the supers, and the bottom of the bottom board.

Note: my mom shamed me into sanding before I paint, so I do sand with a palm sander to knock off any nasty grain or sharp spots and to round the hard edges just a bit.

Our first two hives were lovingly decorated by our daughter and my mom, but some of the fancy art work has peeled off. So the following year, we simply primed and painted the boxes pure white with a little bit of color on the bottom board and telescoping lid.

Step 5: Decide How You Want Your Bees

There are 3 main ways to get bees in your hive. There's the expensive way, the cheap way, and the free way. As you move down the list know that the more you spend the higher the likelihood of success and the less you spend the more likely you'll be experiencing stress.

The Expensive Option: Nucs

When it comes to buying bees and setting up hives, nucs are the way to go.

A nuc is a self contained colony of bees, and depending where you purchased, it will come with 4-5 frames in the nuc box. While each nuc is different, you'll always get a queen, a couple of frames of brood, a couple frames of honey/pollen/bee bread to feed the brood, and bees at various stages in their lifecycle.

With a nuc, you can open the nuc box and set each frame into the center of the first brood box in your prepared hive. The process is dead simple and the bees have what they need to hatch out the brood, take care of their queen, and continue growing the hive with very little friction.

We used nucs and the process was so easy, my 12 year old and I did it together!

Cost ~$200 USD, and ~$350 CAD

The Cheaper Option: Bee Tubes

When you buy a tube of bees, the seller will shake out a few frames of bees into a package until the weight is right - usually 2-3 lbs of bees per tube. Then a mated (but untested) queen is added to the tube, suspended in a queen cage to protect her from the bees while they get used to her pheromones and adopt her as their own.

Installing a tube of bees is basically the reverse of how they pack it, you open the tube and invert it over your prepared hive and shake the bees right in there. If the queen hasn't been freed from her queen cage yet, you can open the queen cage and let her out into the hive.

Tube o' bees has some upside - they are easily shipped nearly anywhere and are pretty hardy, lasting between 5- 7 days during transit.

But it also has some downsides. Without brood in different stages of development, you run into a problem with the life cycle of bees and may experience a slump in population while the brood chamber is filled and fresh bees are hatched. The queen, although mated, may be of poor quality. The bees are susceptible to frost and overheating in shipping.

Cost: ~$175 USD, and ~$270 CAD

The Free Option: Catch A Swarm

If you're brave enough to go catch a swarm for free bees when you're first starting beekeeping, I tip my hat to you!

I know people who have done this, and while it's not something I would have been prepared to do in my first few months as a beekeeper, it is an absolutely viable method for filling your hive.

Ideally, you'll want to put the word out to local beekeepers that you're looking to capture swarms and have them reach out to you if they notice any. Once you get the call, you'll head down to the swarm with a tote of some sort, knock the bees off of whatever they are clung to, and make sure you get the queen. Pack them up and bring them to your hive where you'll dump them in!

The other option, if the swarm is in a place where this is possible, is to place a single story hive beneath the swarm, smoke the swarm so that you can locate the queen, and ensure she is placed in the box with some of the other bees. Then close up the hive and walk away for 12-24 hours. The swarming bees will follow the scent of their queen and march right into the box. Then you can pick up the entire hive and bring it to your apiary.

Cost: ~$0 + some confidence!

Step 6: Have A Plan For Harvesting Honey

I will not lie, the first honey harvest is such a rush! It's a culmination of many hours and a lot of work. Opening that honey gate and watching pure liquid gold flow is so satisfying.

Depending on your location, when you get your hives and their strength, you may not get a harvest in the first season, but you need a plan to harvest honey before it's time to harvest honey!

There are a couple options:

• Crush and sieve method: This involves scraping the honeycomb from the frames and crushing it to release the honey. The mash is then filtered through a double mesh strainer. While this is a low cost option, the hidden cost is the loss of labor and infrastructure that your bees worked hard to build and will need to rebuild next season before making more honey.
• Borrow an extractor: Your local association may rent or lend beekeeping equipment like uncapping forks, knives, strainers, and extractors. This is a cost effective way to harvest the honey your first year or if you only intend to keep a small number of hives.
• Buy an extractor: Kevy and I are the worst when it comes to go big or go home. We purchased a large 20 fame radial extractor from Worker and Hive. It was costly, but it future proofed us. Our first year, it was barely filled with frames! In our second season, our spring honey harvest of 50 lbs was done within like 2 hours - including removing frames from the hive, uncapping, extracting, and returning honey supers back to the hive.

Step 7: Get Started

If after all of the above, you still want to start beekeeping, then take the leap of faith!

I love my bees, and I tell it to anyone who will listen. They are beyond fascinating, and tending to them is an absolute joy in my life.

Thoughts From The Homestead Apiary

Getting started beekeeping is no different than considering other types of animal husbandry. Raising honey bees is very much about caring for them through the seasons. I recommend having all your equipment and supplies in order before ordering your bees - it could be panic inducing if your bees are on the way and you're missing a bee suit, or your hives aren't painted and ready for the new inhabitants.

The initial investment into beekeeping is high, but I always recommend getting the best quality you can afford. This stops you from having to replace things that break or wear out, and in the long run, saves you money and headaches.

Pin This Guide On How To Become A Beekeeper!