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The only additional items you need thereafter are 2 airtight buckets to help harvest your honey and a sieve.

The best thing you can do after you purchase your starter kit is focus on growing the number of bee hives you own and run!

Beekeeping is a venture that benefits from economy of scale. It implies the more bee hives you have running the more honey you make! This results in more profits. That's the basic formula for becoming a full on beekeeper.

Don't purchase any other unnecessary equipment once you have these basic once-off items except for bee hives!

Special care should be taken to not over capitalise on harvesting equipment when a simple bucket and sieve filtering system will do. Once you reach 50 hives or more then consider an extractor for example.

Welcome To Our Beekeeping Starter Kit Hints & Tips Section

It is normal practice for beekeeping to take place in pairs. Simply this is a safety measure however teamwork offers more benefits as well. Our beekeeping supplies are well priced and top quality.

We only quote for one set of Tools - YOU GET 2 sets of bee hives. The reason for this is that it is advisable to have two hives in order to increase the success rate of keeping bees over the winter period.

The other reason would be that using the colony in your first hive, you may be able to use certain techniques to introduce bees from the existing hive into the empty hive and create a totally new hive. Also it is very good practice to have an empty brood chamber when working with your bees.

The main reason I suggest purchasing catch boxes is that they are easier to sustain a newly captured swarm. The smaller environment promotes quick comb building as less energy is spent keeping the inner temperature regulated with a small number of bees. These smaller 'catch boxes' are able to be moved and handled easily too. An advantage if the boxes are placed on rooftops, in trees and or in fields.

As for the different packages and the hives that support them, the main difference is that the Langstroth requires a queen excluder in conventional beekeeping practice whereas the Jackson does not. There are also good indications that the Jackson is much more efficient and productive in terms of harvested honey than the Langstroth. The manufacturer reported up to 30% more honey harvested in half of the time than those colonies housed in Langstroth hives.

Extraction methods and techniques are normally only necessary to discuss after the spring period due to the strong nectar flows and therefore honey production. As far as beginner beekeeping goes, I would not suggest investing in an extractor until your colony numbers are in the 50s or higher.

At BeeWare, we currently manage 40 hives at two separate locations and we use a bucket and nylon sieve with a clamp. We return the clamped wax for a day or two once the honey has been harvested. However, if you require extraction equipment, contact BeeWare and we will source beekeeping supplies for you at reasonable prices.

It is not worthwhile investing in queen excluders right away if you are going to purchase Langstroth hives as the bees will take at least two months to build enough comb in the brood chamber to warrant placing a super chamber for honey storage.

If you place the super chamber too early there are not enough bees to regulate the additional 'space' now made available. The bees will exert more energy trying to regulate the internal temperature rather than using it to continue building and gathering comb. Only purchase the queen excluder once the bees begin building on the 6th frame in the Langstroth brood chamber. This is a good indication that the bees are ready for a super chamber to be placed and therefore an excluder is required.

The bee brush is usually used to move bees from an area to another area. It is also used to remove bees from beekeepers protective clothing after inspections and apiary work is complete. Bees will congregate at the middle of the back, on the legs and on the hood or bee veil.

The Jackson Horizontal hive frames are all full frames including the frames storing honey. This may be a deterrant for those with extractor machines set for Langstroth Super frames. The way to use Jackson Horizontal hive honey frames during large extraction processes is to implement a filtering method by clamping the comb, then the filtered honey flows through two to three settling tanks with different sized filters. Using a technique like this could result in processing more than a ton of honey a day easily. It doesn't warrant setting up for a small start-up project with less than 30 hives.

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