Start Your Beekeeping Journey!
Discover the joy of Beekeeping with our beginner-friendly tips, guides, and resources. Our experts tips will ensure your beekeeping success!
Starting with the Essentials
Everything a Beginner Beekeeper Needs to Know
Start by learning the fundamental steps of setting up your first hive, choosing bees, and maintaining a healthy colony
It can be daunting as a beginner beekeeper for the first time. This ancient practice of farming bees has been around forever and the knowledge passed down from one generation to another. Luckily, as long as you provide your beehive with the right environment, their instinctive DNA will take over and put your hive on auto-pilot. The main thing to understand as a new beekeeper is to ensure you don’t get in the way of nature, and keep a careful watch for signs of disease or deterioration.
The best way to start is to peruse our library of helpful information and discover the amazing facts around what makes bees so special. We provide a wealth of knowledge for the average beekeeping beginner that has been curated from both research and personal experience in the field. Lets start with some of the basics and work up your knowledge of beekeeping from there.
Beekeeping Equipment For Beginners
While there are a heap of sites that will tell you that the only way to keep bees is with a 10 frame deep Langstroth hive, or others dedicated to the latest technology of the Flow Hive, we try to focus more on what suits your unique situation. Bees will happily create a hive in something as benign as a hole in the ground, but for obvious reasons, setting yourself up with the right equipment at the start can mean the difference of hard work, or enjoyable leisure.
Focusing on the basics of ease of use, budget friendly and ensuring you are able to support your bees well is what we are trying to achieve. While a 10 frame Langstroth Hive might look like the most productive hive, you will thank us when you try lifting a much smaller shallow box full with capped honey comb. So have a look around and learn from the success and mistakes of others to know exactly what kind of equipment you will be wanting to establish at home!
Maintaining Your Hive Health
Nature has taught the bee to produce and manage their honey for thousands of years. There really isn’t much human involvement needed in this process except to ensure that their environment is capable of supporting their colony. This is the domain of the beginner beekeeper to primarily be an observer.
Ensuring you know the signs to watch out for in the case of disease, pests or even starvation means that you will be prepared for action to help your little bee friends out when needed. Read through some of our articles on the common ailments that may affect your hive and learn how you can better support your colony through seasonal changes.
Finding Your Local Beekeeping Resources
Beekeeping can be a wonderfully social past time and as a beginner beekeeper, you need to ensure you have access to some local mentors. Don’t just rely on the local provider of hives or what you read on the internet, talking with people in your unique area can help you tailor your practices to your specific environment.
As a bonus, you will have access to a second set of eyes over your hives to help spot sign of common issues while starting in beekeeping and get advanced warning of any local diseases or seasonal issues which may also affect your hive. Apiary clubs are usually very welcoming to new members as the more confident beekeepers we can create, the more secure our planets future becomes.
We have compiled a huge knowledge base of clubs and associations you can reach out to so have a look for your local area. If you find one we have missed, please let us know as we are constantly updating our database.
Advanced Beekeeping Techniques and Bee Behaviour
If you are still within your first 2 years of beekeeping and starting to get a feel for things, perhaps you are more interested in some of our advanced knowledge. As a beginner beekeeper, the continual pursuit of knowledge is a hallmark of a good beekeeper and understanding bee behaviour certainly places you in a great position to learn more.
As an observational beekeeper, your ability to observe, reflect and better understand why your bees are acting in a way will mean that you can accurately tend to their needs and effectively get out of their way as they produce their honey. Find out from our PHD researchers why bees act in the way they do coupled with some hilarious stories when the interpretation doesn’t quite go the right way.
Frequently Asked Questions
To start beekeeping, it’s important to educate yourself through books, online courses, or by joining a local beekeeping club. Purchasing a beginner beekeeping kit, which typically includes a hive, tools, and protective gear, is a great first step. Choose a location with plenty of flowering plants and water sources to ensure your bees thrive.
The Langstroth hive is the most popular choice for beginners due to its modular design, ease of use, and availability of parts. It allows easy access to the bees, making hive management, honey extraction, and inspections straightforward for new beekeepers.
The initial cost of beekeeping for beginners ranges from $300 to $500, which covers equipment like a beehive, protective gear, a bee smoker, and the purchase of bees (often a nucleus or package of bees). Additional costs may include ongoing maintenance and replacing supplies.
Spring is the ideal time to start beekeeping because it aligns with the bees’ natural cycle of building up their population and foraging for nectar. Starting in spring gives your colony plenty of time to grow before winter.
Beginner beekeepers should inspect their hives every 7-10 days to monitor the health of the colony, check for diseases, ensure the queen is present, and manage pests like varroa mites. Over time, you’ll learn to recognize signs of a healthy hive and know when an inspection is necessary.
When nectar is scarce, especially in early spring or late fall, you can feed your bees sugar syrup. For beginners, a simple sugar-water solution (1:1 ratio in spring, 2:1 in fall) is a safe, effective way to supplement their diet.
As a beginner, it’s important to have a full beekeeper suit, including a veil to protect your face, gloves, and long sleeves. This protective clothing will help prevent bee stings and make you feel more confident while working with your hive.
A new hive typically takes 6-12 months to produce a harvestable amount of honey. It’s important to allow the bees to establish their colony and create sufficient honey stores before harvesting, especially in the first year.
For beginners, regular hive inspections are key to preventing pests and diseases. Learn to identify varroa mites, small hive beetles, and signs of common diseases like American foulbrood. Maintaining good hive ventilation, providing proper spacing between frames, and keeping the area around the hive clean will help reduce pest infestations.
The queen bee is the sole reproductive female in the hive, responsible for laying eggs and maintaining colony cohesion. Regular inspections to ensure the queen is laying eggs and observing the colony’s behavior toward her will help you monitor her health. A failing queen may lead to the decline of the hive, and in such cases, you may need to replace her with a new queen.
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About Us
Dr. Garth A. Cambray is a Canadian/South African entrepreneur and beekeeper with 28 years of experience in apiculture and specializes in adding value to honey. His Ph.D. research developed a new advanced continuous fermentation method for making mead that has resulted in a number of companies globally being able to access markets for mead. His company, Makana Meadery, exports honey mead to the USA where it is available to discerning connoisseurs.
He has also developed technologies to commercially manufacture organic honey vinegar in Zambia for export globally. He holds a few patents globally in the ethanol industry and believes in technology and knowledge transfer for human development and environmental sustainability. One of his proudest achievements is the fact that the wind farm he started at one of his old apiary sites has essentially made his hometown carbon neutral.
Beekeeper Members
We are always learning, adapting and understanding our beehives. That’s why we keep our members up to date with the latest tips and expertise from professional beekeepers and industry experts.
Henry Dawson
I have been beekeeping for the past 3 years and found Beekeepertips.com to be a great source of information to support my learning. I like that they don't push a product if there is a DIY simple solution instead!
Getting the monthly newsletter helps me keep on top of the tips I need to keep my 4 hives alive and well. The detail around mite treatments has definitely saved our hives a couple of times last year.
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