What Do I need?

There is a wide variety of equipment that is in use to house, manage, harvest and overwinter bees. We will discuss the common equipment that is used in Saskatchewan. Personal preference and availability will govern most of your decisions.

Housing

A beehive, like any other house, needs a foundation, a roof and rooms. Almost all bee hives use the Langstroth design.

The bottom board is the foundation,, It normally is placed on a pallet or other base to keep it off the ground. There are two major types, solid and screened, Screened bottom boards are meant to help with varroa mite control. Some types can also be used as sticky boards to test for might drop, in order to estimate the effectiveness of treatments.

There are also two main types of lids. The inner/outer style has two parts and is the most commonly used. The other is an insulated lid which is much thicker and only one piece. The insulation helps the bees to maintain the hive temperature whether its hot or cold.

There are three sizes of Langstroth hive bodies, known as supers. The deep size is the standard, and should always be used for the brood chambers,. This allows interchangeability between hives and is the size that will hold your nuc frames.

The issue with deep supers is that when they are full of honey they can weigh in the 70 – 80 lb. range. Some beekeepers use the medium and shallow supers instead for their honey supers as they weigh less than the deep super. The problem arises though that the frames are not compatible with the deeps so frames can not be swapped down into the brood chamber.

For each hive you want to house, normally you would require a lid system, two deep brood chamber supers, 3 deep or 5 medium homey supers, a bottom board and a pallet or other support.

Management Tools

Bees sometimes sting. It is important to have the proper protection to minimize stings and to maintain a level of comfort and confidence. The bee suitis the main protection. Most new beekeepers wear a full suit which includes a veil. Although it is good practice to learn to go bare handed when working the bees, a pair of goat skin gloves are useful in some circumstances. Tall shoes or boots and high preferably white socks are recommended to keep bees away from the ankles.

The hive tool is the main tool used to manipulate the hive, supers and frames. We prefer the j-hook hive tool as we find it easier to manipulate frames. The scraper style is more commonly used and so easier to find.

Bee brushes are usually used to brush bees off of frames, hives, beekeepers etc. They are fairly standard, except some are made from animal hair and the bees tend to want to sting them. The are also usually quite soft making them not work that well. You want a brush that is a little, but not too stiff.

The smoker is an essential tool for the beekeeper. Smoke calms the bees and makes them easier to manage. A good smoker has a cage that helps prevent burns. Some smokers have a bellows, the part you puff, that is square and sharp. I like the rounded ones better. You can use many fuels in a smoker. We use alfalfa cubes as they are easy to light and convenient. Some use alfalfa pellets which are harder to light and tend to fall out of the smoker into the five.

A varroa mite shaker is an important tool. It is used to test a hive for varroa mites. Testing and treating mites is of utmost importance as they are the number one cause of hive loss for new beekeepers.

Pollen supplemental feeding is a great way to get extra nutrition into your hives. Bees will gather pollen substitute whenever they can get out of the hive but the weather is not warm enough to gather natural pollen such as early and late season as well as early and late in the day and on cooler days. Commercial pollen feeders are fairly expensive but there are lots pf plans online to make your own.

Queen excluders are a screen made with slots that are big enough for worker bees to squeeze through but prevent the queen from passing. They are used mainly to keep the queen out of the honey supers so there is no brood. The are optional, with fans on both sides of the debate. They come in plastic and metal types.

It is important to feed sugar syrup to bees in Saskatchewan. Feeding in the spring keeps hives from starving and stimulate them to increase their population. Fall feeding gives the bees extra stores to make it through the long Saskatchewan winters.

There are four main types of syrup feeders.

The Boardman Feeder fits into the front entrance of the hive, but it can not hold much syrup and so is not practical.
The in-hive feeder holds more, but you need to open the hive to add syrup and it takes up the space of one or two frames.
The top feeder sits above the hive like another super and has about a two gallon capacity. It is difficult to remove it to inspect the hive if it is full. Inspect first then fill. The syrup tends to be kept warm by the hive heat making it more acceptable to the bees.
The feeder pail is the most used system. A pail with a very fine screen is inverted and aligned with a hole in the inner cover. An empty super and the lid can be placed over the pail to help keep in the heat. Pails usually hold 3.5 gallons.

Harvest Equipment

Your bees have spent the summer months collecting and storing honey, and now it is time for us to collect our fair share. The first thing we need to do is remove the honey frames from the hive with as few bees attached as possible. There are many ways to accomplish this, the easiest being to brush or shake the bees off of the frames. This is practical with a few hives. Another popular method is to use acid boards also known as fume boards. The boards are sprinkled with a bee repellent and placed on top of the hive. The fumes cause the bees to move down in the hive making it easy to remove the empty top supers.

Once the supers are off, we need to remove the honey from the comb. We do not want to destroy the comb as it was a lot of work for the bees and for us to get that foundation built out. First we need to remove the cappings, which is protecting the honey and keeping it in the cells. for this we use a capping scratcher which breaks the caps. Then we use an extractor which uses centrifugal force caused by spinning to extract the honey from the comb. Small extractors can extract from two frames at a time. We then usually strain the honey to remove any foreign particles using a double screen honey sieve. A pail with a honey gate is great for straining into and then bottling.

Wintering

Now that the season is coming to a close, we need to prepare our hives for the winter. We need to feed sugar syrup, control varroa mites and wrap the hives to protect them from the cold. The most common winter wraps used in Saskatchewan are the western style wraps. These wraps are available to fit one to four hives. It is possible to use the four hive wrap to wrap one to four hives in a group so think about how many hives you might have in the future when buying. Wrap top entrances are used to fix the wrap at the top entrance to ensure the bees can get in and out.

Hive Inhabitants

Once you are settled on your equipment, the next issue is getting the bees to fill your hive. There are three main ways to get bees in the spring, packages ,nucs and overwintered hives. It is suggested to run at least two hives if you can. Having multiple hives allows you to swap resources between hives and compare differences in their progression. Besides, more hives means more fun.

Overwintered hives are great as they are established and you get the hive equipment with them. They are more expensive and hard to come by though. Packages are made up of bees and a caged queen but there is no comb, stores or brood. It takes about four weeks for a package to catch up to where a nuc is when it is purchases, maybe longer on foundation. Nucs are also in short supply but more readily available than overwintered hives. Spring nucs are made up of local bees and brood with an imported queen. Make sure to get your orders in early to ensure you get your bees for spring.

Saving on Equipment

.When sourcing equipment, shop around. There are more sources of hive equipment today than there ever.

If you have carpentry skills, some equipment can be made at home. There are plenty of web sites with DIY plans for bee equipment.
Buy a kit. It is usually cheaper yo buy kits than purchase the individual components.
Buy unassembled equipment and put together and paint yourself.
Used equipment is also an option however make sure that it has been inspected by the provincial apiculturist.

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