There is a lot to know when keeping bees and their is a lot of equipment that is needed to make it easy and fun. Before keeping bees it is a good idea to get familiar with the process. Find out if there is a bee keeping association in your area or a bee keeping course. It is good to have an idea before you jump in as to what is needed and how you can bee prepared. There is a lot of stuff that is needed and a little bit of knowledge so get prepared before getting bees. Here are some things that are needed to keep bees.     Keeping bees can bee expensive to start because there is a lot required to keep bees. Hive tool… for getting into to inspect the hive. Bee jacket or suits, protective clothing to be worn. Smoker, smoke is used to calm down the bees. When smoke is used the bees think that there is a fire coming and they fill up on honey in case they need to flee the hive. This put them in to a calmer demeanor so they are easier to work with. Smoke is also used to cover the smell of the stings if there are any whilst doing the inspection. It is a good idea when you start keeping bees to acquire  a few box’s to start with.  You will find that in the first season you may get a swarm or queen cells. This allows  you to start collecting more bees. To do this you need more box’s. I recommend that when you start keeping bees it is good to have at least 5 spare box’s to start with. The box’s come in 10 or 8 frame or 10 frame size’s. This means you will need to buy frames to fill the box’s. With 1 hive of three box’s you will need 24 to 30 frames and these will need to be replaced when first extracted. With each frame you need to put a layer of wax foundation. This is held in there by stainless wire. This is the standard way to keep bees that has been used for a hundred years. This is not to say that you can keep bees in whatever style you want.. There are a few hive standards that work in relation to the inside volume, but I have seen them build in all sorts of places. The bee hive is generally kept at mid 30’s Degrees C, if the hive gets to hot or cold different things happen, and generally the larvae die. They need enough space to build layered combs from a hanging point, generally it is two layers of comb of honey on tr outside and three combs for brood on the inside, about 400 mm by 400 mm will work. This is a rough guide if you are working with round log hiving and such. Round log hives are, tree stumps or logs that are turned into bee hives, replicating the natural hive situation in the forest. This is quite hard to collect honey from but if it is small enough to put a standard box on top, this is one one to make use of the natural style of bees. Round log hiving was one of the first ways ever to keep bees.

Top bar hiving is a way in which it cuts down the cost of initial investment by doing away with the wire and wax process and just giving the bees the top bar to work with. They build the wax from the top bar only, this way the hive is full of  new wax and not bought pressed foundation, ( wax sheets). The box’sin top bar hiving are different to the standard box’s because the bottom of the box narrows inwards to a thinner bottom. the inyernal size is increased by movable end plates that are moved down the length of the box whilst the hive is developing in size. When the hive is big enough the end plates are removed to allow the bee to fill the entire space in the box.

 picture from       http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Top_bar_hive/

Some quick article that I have found are:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-08-15/bee-honey-hive-apiary-beekeeping-beekeeper-get-started/10107566