How to choose a beehive – what beekeepers need to prepare

 

 Beekeeping starts with buying your first beehive. In the first year, it will be enough to have only two to four hives in order to test our carrying capacity and endurance. In the second year we can double or even multiply the hives. It is best to purchase a beehive in the spring. This allows you to see the entire bee growth cycle from spring through fall while preparing for winter. A healthy beehive will have at least 4-5 boxes of bees. There must be brood bees and a young and strong queen bee in the bee colony. Generally, when the queen bee reaches her third year of life, her egg-laying speed will become very slow. Most new beekeepers like to purchase a "nuclear colony" to start their beekeeping journey. A nucleation swarm (or nucleation) is a small community of bees with an organizational structure similar to that of a strong bee colony, but is only 50% larger. A core colony usually consists of 4-5 hive boxes, not 8 or 10. At the same time, it also includes bee brood, bee pollen, sealed and unsealed honey, a sufficient number of worker bees and a young and strong queen bee, as well as an orderly social order of bees. New beekeepers are unlikely to harvest honey their first summer. However, he or she can closely follow the core colony as it develops and grows, gaining inspiration and experience from it.
 When it comes to beekeeping equipment, we don’t need to invest a lot of money in the first year of entry. On the other hand, when using someone else’s equipment, the risk of the colony contracting various diseases increases. In addition to the beehive, we also need to prepare suitable work clothes, special masks and gloves to protect ourselves from bee stings. In addition, we also need to buy a simple scraper, a bee smoker (to appease the bees), a brush and a tool kit (including a hammer, various nails, screwdrivers, hex wrenches, knives, pliers, wire, Honeycomb partition, king table cleaner). We also need enough space to harvest honey, store honey, perform hive maintenance and repairs. A small, well-ventilated room is enough as long as we keep it clean. Finally, we may need wire, pins, an electric wax cutter, a fumigator (to sterilize the hive frames and panels), and a feeder to feed the colony.

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