A gentler breed is preferred when staring out with your first bees, because one way or another you will learn to respect bees. It’s better to get few stings with a beginner hive than hundreds of bees aiming their stingers at you! Have the proper equipment. Hive suits, one larger size is recommended to give you slack and ventilation when moving around, also bees will not be able to get their stingers through so easily. You’d be surprise that they can sting through two layers of clothing. To cover major parts, I wear a hat veil with strings to cover my head, long sleeve shirt, and jeans. During the hotter months and higher humidity levels, there’ll be some sweating going inside your bee suit. To prevent sweat from running down your face and into the hive you can wear a bandanna on your head. For people with long hair, tie it up, don’t let it get in your way of your inspection.

A lot of the things mentioned may sound simple, common sense, and practical. The best advice I’ve heard from experienced beekeepers is “let the bees be.” Sometimes I think that’s silly after all the work I put in all these years. But looking back sometimes you can do too much, and also not enough. Have your focus, have your goal set to when you’re working with bees. They’ll appreciate you as a handler, and of there will be course less casualties on both sides. Move carefully, just as you are watching them, they’re also watching you. A bunch of little eyeballs looking at your hands moving around. When their little heads lined up in row are sticking out between the frames and watching you, you may puff a little smoke on them. It only takes one sting to trigger the alert pheromone for the colony. In that case, with your smoker you can puff at the place of sting, to mask the pheromone. A honey bee sting is an unforgettable experience, or any stings for that matter.

Be prepared to treat your sting(s), have something readily available to treat it, I use an anti-itch topical cream. Since bees are protecting their home you can’t blame them for trying. They have a whole ecological system going on down there.  

Tools and equipment. Pick your weapons of invasion carefully! Just kidding though it could be seen this way from the bees’ perspective. I inspect multiple hives throughout the day. Over the years, I found a bucket organizer (a sleeve with pockets that go around a 5-gallon bucket) the most practical and convenient set-up to carry from hive to hive. In this bucket organizer I have a hive tool (j hook), frame grabber with manipulator (good for wood and plastic frames), frame perch, 9-frame spacer, bee brush, heavy duty scissors, flashlight, black permanent marker (for labeling on tape), roll of white duct tape, a couple of entrance reducers, couple small blocks of wood (wood wedges to help prop up spacing between hive boxes), lighter, smoker wood plug, 2 queen clip cages, fillet knife (why, am I gutting fish? No, it’s to cut comb as needed), and needle-nose pliers.

Last but not least it’s the glorious smoker. Get a good quality smoker, as it will save you countless hours of keeping the smoke alive. I keep my smoker in a different bucket, on top of my fuel (wood shavings). Understand how the smoker works - inside the smoker there is an inner round, base that is perforated  with metal legs, the breather plate. If you’re able to fix these legs to the bottom of the smoker with the legs touching the base of the smoker, and just above the air inlet, then you’ve won half the battle. This will allow air as you squeeze the bellow to flow into the chamber easily to create mix with heat and fuel, thus creating smoke and potentially a flaming mini torch if you’re not careful. This can burn the little wings of your bees. Technique, technique, technique.

To use a smoker is sort an art, that must be mastered ASAP. Rule of thumb to starting up the smoker, fill it with your preferred choice of fuel one third of the chamber full. Fuel will vary, based on region and what you have access to.  Dried wood shavings, pine, pellets, etc all work fine. Some say one quarter full, but one third is good. Light it up with your match or lighter. Let it catch on fire a bit. You can hold it momentarily parallel to the ground so that the flame moves up across the surface area. When this is going, and there is a flame across the surface, start pumping the bellow. When the flames have a nice ember color, and it starts to grow taller than the smoker, quickly add more fuel while continuing to pump the bellow until chamber is full, be careful with your hands. The smoke should be white and cool to touch. It should not feel hot. If hot, retry the process from the beginning. You will use your smoker until the end of your beekeeping career, so to keep it from building up tar around opening lid, just scrape off the stuff.

The hive components quality is most important to your bees. Your hive boxes should be flush with the bottom board and to each other. As this will keep other insects from getting in there, less weather damage, and bees won’t spend energy on trying to seal it up with propolis. It is recommended the hive faces the morning sun and not the afternoon sun.  We all in Texas know how hot it gets here. Again, bees can focus their energy into growing the colony and making delicious honey, instead of trying to cool themselves all afternoon long. The hive facing the fence works too.