Beekeeping for beginners- The absolute basics

hi friends my name is Sarah and today I'm gonna go through the absolute basics of beekeeping everything that you need to start beekeeping right now today is a beautiful morning and it's starting to get a little bit hot so let's get right into it the first thing I suggest is knowing if whether you're allergic or not there's no point in getting everything together all the equipment and buying everything and then finding out your anaphylactic allergic to it and then you have to sell it all so the best way I find to do this is actually go out and find a bee keyboard find a local beekeeper somebody to help you somebody you can follow along with and gain a lot of knowledge from and in turn hopefully you can help help them out with extracting or hive inspections or whatnot find it's the best way to learn how to be keep you can also learn from books there are many different beekeeping books out there all of which contain a lot of very good information and I recommend at least reading through a couple of those anyways and the second thing that you are going to need is just make sure you have enough space to keep these bees hives need quite a bit of space and you're gonna want natural barriers in between your hive your neighbors and your own house so big trees walls garages anything these are going to be attracted to light at than at nighttime and that that can go terribly wrong knowing from experience it might not be you get stung it might actually be your housemates who end up getting stung and then getting really mad at you so make sure you have lots of room to keep your bees and it also helps to have a bit of weather protection and shade so a nice big shady tree or something that you've custom-built yourself really helps keep the bees safe dry and cooler in the summer time the second the second most important thing in my opinion is protective clothing yeah you don't necessarily need to go out and buy a proper bee suit but I do recommend at least having a veil long sleeves long pants and very very good Footwear so I normally just wear long rubber boots and that helps keep the bees out of my shoes out of my feet you can get these suits for pretty cheap online however sometimes they don't last all that long my solution to this is actually just to make some pretty spiffy cuffs so it keeps the bees are out and a little bit of a protective layer between yourself and your gloves you're also going to want gloves this is personal preference you can use leather gloves these are actually those Hospital prick proof gloves and they're great because you can still feel what you're doing and hopefully you're not going to get stung through them at least not too bad you can either do that or you can do both you can and put a layer two layers on these gloves and a leather glove over top you can't feel as much but at least you're not gonna get stung in the fingers a hat inside this veil helps keep the mesh off my face hopefully so you don't get stung do you have a helper it's good to get them to help make sure that you've done this up correctly you don't let any bees inside your suit also really helps to have the suit at least a couple of sizes too big that way the suit won't be touching your skin and you're less likely to get stung flaps down oh good the next things you're gonna need are the actual hive equipment and hive tools so got a smoker here well I don't really recommend this for years ago it still works so haven't replaced it quite yet just need her a smoker that actually works and it blows a good amount of smoke the next thing most important thing is your hive tool it just helps this this tool pretty much does everything it helps you get into the hive and pry the frames out which sometimes can be a bit hard because they're sticky and full of Wax thanks for some more hair brushes these ones are a bit warped but they help you brush the bees off the frames off the honey frames so you can put them into your tubs and bring them away for extracting you don't want to bring any bees with you that's a good recipe to get stung so of course hair brushes just brush them off the next thing you're gonna need the actual hives themselves so these boxes the ones that I use are full depth eight frames in each box so you've got the bottom brood box which contains the Queen they've got the Queen excluder there and then I've got three boxes honey boxes or honey supers on top you've also got on the very bottom the floorboard and on the top I've got a roof the Queen excluder just looks like this basically does exactly that it excludes the Queen from going up into the top boxes and laying eggs at where you want the honey to be she can't get through these spaces so that helps keep her out I've got a nice little table set up beside my hive so I can do stuff like this put the frames down if I need to put boxes down anything just just to help out it helps to have extra workspaces while you're doing this you also don't want to have your hives directly on the ground so this is a system I have I've put it onto a table put the hives onto this table and just put a tub with some oil around the legs so the ants actually can't climb up you can see there's a bit of dirt around we've had some big storms so that's the reason why you don't want to put your hive directly on to the ground it also helps the bees have a bigger landing area when they come in and out of the hive and it prevents rot on the bottom and the floorboards want to have something so out pallet bricks anything to keep the highs the hives up off of the ground the system works very well if you have ants when you take it all the France off of your hogs you're going to need a few different tools to extract the hunting of it I use one of these manual extractors they can be a bit pricey but they definitely make it easier faster getting some food great pals some clean pails to put the honey into and then from there you're gonna want a strainer or sieve sending the bits of wax and other things out of the honey afterwards to uncap the frames you have a couple options you have a hot knife I've used this before but I don't use it so much anymore but this little comb brush which I find is faster it's all personal preference again you don't want to tub to put the frame down on to well or I'm tapping it something very simple like this just a piece of wood it's got a screw in the middle here sits over this or this hub flips on and then you can see the frame down here and straight there which makes it very easy then it goes into the extractor where the honey comes out of the frames and you're also going to need wax foundation wax foundation sheets to click on to the frames this is what the frame looks like without the honey onto it so you put the wax foundation on and then the bees build any help from there these are the tops that I use to take the frames off and bring them back to be extracted I recommend hitting a heavy-duty ones it's nice to have the clear ones so you can see brought any beads home with you but they tend not to last so long to get the heavy duty ones and you'll save your money I also recommend not ordering nice clothes like wear wear something very sticky and very dirty while you're extracting you're also going to put another clause laying around because everything is going to get very very sticky it's also hot and hard work make sure you have a good amount of water with you so you don't get dehydrated a few other optional things to have about strapping on our beer using the uniform tax so once it had all the equipment or you can borrow it the only thing left that you need are the actual beads the cheapest and the easiest way in my opinion is to catch a swarm if you can catch a storm that's great that is done only mostly in the springtime if you can't do that then you can ask a local beekeeper they might have some extra Atif for you or there is such thing as you can order these and they can be shipped to you which I have actually done it's not as crazy as it sounds once you have two bees and the equipment or you're borrowing it you are often running thanks for watching guys if you are beekeeper or if you'd like to be a beekeeper let me know in the comments below if you plug this kind of contacts make sure to subscribe because I'll be doing more and be more beekeeping and different adventures as well so follow along thanks again and happy beekeeping

Channel: Self Sufficient Sarah

Views: 278,962

Keywords: bees, beekeeper, honey, extracting, hive tool, smoker, honey super, brood box, flowers, nectar, pollen, sting, beekeeping, bee suit, tools, basics of beekeeping, beekeeping for beginners, start, start beekeeping, equipment, hive inspections, extract honey, brood, swarm, catch a swarm, bee, hive

Id: wIoaJFMUu4Q

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2018