With sufficient tools and knowledge, beekeeping can be an interesting and satisfying hobby. There are an array of benefits to keeping bees such as helping gardens, producing honey and beeswax. Beeswax can be used for candle making, skin creams and lip balms. So what does one need to start keeping bees? There are four types of equipment for beekeeping; personal equipment, beehives, extracting equipment and wintering equipment. Personal Equipment For protecting yourself and properly taking care of your bees, you will require a minimum of three important things; a wide brimmed hat with a veil, a hive tool, and a bee smoker. And it should be a wide-brimmed hat; a baseball cap isn’t enough. You need to keep the bees from roaming your head, face and neck as head stings are especially painful. A bee smoker emits a gentle puff of smoke to calm the bees. A hive tool allows you to manipulate the frames that hold cones in the hive. You can use a bee suit, bee gloves, and high boots for further protection against stings. It may help you feel more comfortable while working around the bees. Beehives Most beehives come with a bottom board and a hive cover and have five layers, known as supers, in between. Supers contain around nine to ten frames of comb. The comb is where the bees rear their larvae, store pollen and create the honey. Typically the bees will use the two bottom supers for rearing the young and for storage, and the top three layers for the honey crop. Typically, it is best to purchase a hive that has already contained bees for a year or more, as a new hive can stress the bees and reduce honey production for a period of time. But a beehive can also be built properly from new components. The hive should be checked for tightness and for enough room for worker bees to roam around. Extracting Equipment For extracting the honey crop, you will require some special tools. A bee brush helps to sweep the bees off a frame when taken out of the supers. However, if you plan to have a lot of hives, this can be tedious work. Escape boards are a faster way of clearing off a frame by directing the bees out of the super in one direction. Another method is using certain chemicals and special acid boards to drive the bees out of the honey super. From there, you can extract the honey yourself with a honey extraction device or bring the cones to an established beekeeper. Honey extractors come large or small depending on your crop, and can be hand-powered or motor-driven. Extracted honey needs to then be strained with cheesecloth or nylon and stored in containers in a warm place. Wintering Equipment The last tools you’ll need are for wintering. Wintering is a way of keeping your hives alive during winter months. Insulation is placed over and around the hives, and then wrapped in plastic to hold the insulation in place. It then needs to be covered with a lid or piece of plywood and tied with twine to prevent wind from damaging the cover. An alternative to this is to kill off the colony and buy a new one around spring. Having the proper tools can make for a pleasant beekeeping experience. Be sure to shop, compare and understand your equipment; and you’ll surely enjoy the benefits of keeping bees.