← Back to Beekeeping for Beginners
Our recommendation: start with two colonies
Ideally, start with two colonies rather than one. This gives you a useful comparison as you learn how each colony develops. Plan the space, time and budget for both with your mentor, and have a complete hive and feeder ready for each.
Essential equipment for two starting colonies
- Protective clothing: a properly fitting bee suit with veil, clean gloves with covered wrists and sturdy boots. Check zips, seams and veil before each visit.
- Two complete hives, one for each colony: stable stands, floors, entrance reducers, brood boxes, the correct full complement of assembled frames and foundation for each, crownboards and weatherproof roofs. Dummy boards are useful for safe frame handling.
- A smoker, suitable fuel and lighting equipment: learn safe lighting and extinguishing; keep water available and keep hot equipment away from dry vegetation and poly hives.
- A hive tool: for gently separating boxes and frames.
- Compatible feeders and suitable bee feed: a feeder for each colony, ready before the bees arrive, even if feeding is not immediately needed.
- Hygiene and records: cleaning supplies, spare clean gloves, a lidded container for wax scraps, and a notebook or colony record sheet.
- Hive straps and monitoring equipment: secure both hives and plan Varroa monitoring and control with your mentor.
Buy enough additional equipment to grow into: have compatible spare brood boxes, supers, extra frames and foundation, and spare feeders ready before you need them. Include queen excluders if your management system uses them, plus spare nuc boxes with suitable frames and the floors, crownboards and roofs needed for your planned swarm-control method. Agree quantities with your mentor for two colonies, seasonal growth and possible splits. Two occupied hives are the starting point; they are not all the equipment you will need through the season.
You can postpone buying a honey extractor and bottling kit. Ask your association about shared equipment. New equipment is the simpler starting point; have any used hive assessed for disease risk and correctly disinfected before use. Avoid second-hand comb of unknown history.