Beekeeping is a seasonal hobby therefore the time varies with the seasons. In the middle of winter there is practically nothing to do, except to occasionally check for physical damage or snow blocking the entrances. The busiest time is the early summer when each hive should be checked weekly to stop swarming and add supers. This need take no longer than a few minutes when you get the hang of it.

You can spend a small fortune if you buy everything new and buy everything possible and make the beekeeping suppliers very happy. In practice in the UK a second hand hive with bees cost around £50-70 and your local association might do you a good deal as a new member. A new bee suit and veil will be between £40-£100 the other bits and pieces if you buy new such as smoker, gloves etc should come to less than £100. The most expensive piece of equipment you will want within a year or two will be an honey extractor and these start at around £150 up, most associations will allow you use of a shared extractor.

In mid summer the hive population can exceed 35,000 bees. About 40% of these will remain in the hive as they are too young to fly for forage.

Yes, in the UK there is no legislation to stop you; this may not be the case in other countries. Unless you have a larger garden it would be advisable to keep no more than two colonies. These colonies MUST be gentle in nature and as a beginner you need an experienced beekeeper to assess your bees before putting them in your garden. You should always have a means of getting beekeeping help at short notice in case of early problems.

Is the queen there and laying eggs, called “queen right”. There is no need to actually see the queen just look for eggs and young larvae to be sure that she is ok.
1, Are the bees healthy 2, Do they need feeding 3, Have they plenty of space to expand and store honey 4, Are they planning to swarm (this is a seasonal thing)

If you take a strong colony in the summer and divide the brood nest in two and separate into two brood boxes, then the half of the colony without the queen will quickly start making emergency queen cells and raise a new queen. This is the simplest method of increasing your stock. The box left on the original location will pick up all the flying bees so make sure that the other half has plenty of food reserves. If the bees are preparing to swarm then the queen can be removed and the colony split as above with two or three good cells left in each half. Arguably queens made from normal queen cells can be better than emergency queens but not always. This procedure is similar to the swarm control measure known as ‘making an artificial swarm’.

A swarm is the natural way for bees to multiply and produce new colonies. It is normally the culmination of queen rearing in the early summer.

One hive can produce 60lb (27kg) or more in a good season, however an average hive would be around 25lb (11kg) surplus.
Bees fly about 55,000 miles to make just one pound of honey, that’s 1½ times around the world!

Bees take nectar, which is a sweet sticky substance exuded by most flowers and some insects (Honey dew), and mix it with enzymes from glands in their mouths. This nectar/enzyme mix is stored in hexagonal wax honeycomb until the water content has been reduced to around 17%. When this level is reached the cell is capped over with a thin layer of wax to seal it until the bees need it. This capping indicates to the beekeeper that the honey can be harvested. Capped honey can keep almost indefinitely. For the school swot: Sucrose (nectar) + inverters (bee enzyme) = fructose + glucose = honey.
Perfectly edible honeycomb was found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, over three thousand years old. Ho

The youngest bees cluster in large numbers to raise their body temperature. Wax producing glands under their abdomen slowly secrete slivers of wax about the size of a pinhead. Other worker bees ‘harvest’ these wax scales and take them to the part of the hive requiring the new wax. Bees use about 6lb of honey to produce 1lb of wax.

Yes. A few people are allergic, but most will swell for a short time and then gradually become more immune.

Some times with difficulty, she is normally close to the newly laid eggs and her long body and large legs makes her stand out.  Once found many beekeepers put a small dot of paint on the back of the queen bee that makes her much easier to find the next time.  The paint comes in five colours each colour representing the year.  As Queens seldom live longer than five years, five colours are sufficient.  

No, the queen is simply an egg-laying machine.
The queen bee has a smaller brain than a worker bee.

It is possible for bees to fly as far as 5 miles for food, however an average distance would be less than a mile from the hive. A strong colony flies the equivalent distance of to the moon every day!

No, bees over winter as a strong colony clustered together and using their bodies to generate heat. This cluster is about the size of football, with bees taking turns to be on the cold outside.

A swarm is actively looking for a home, so if the beekeeper puts a nice hive with perhaps some old honey comb in it close to where the swarm has settled, then it is easy to persuade them to take up residence. Normally a few bees are dropped into the hive and they then ‘fan’ their scent to the other bees once it has been ‘approved’. It is a dramatic sight to see a swarm ‘marching’ into a new hive.
Bees already in residence perhaps in a chimney or old tree must be removed with their honeycomb containing the young grubs and the queen. If the bees cannot be reached then the beekeeper is helpless and the council or local pest control can destroy the colony.

The queen bee is kept below the upper boxes in the hive (called ‘Supers’) by a wire or plastic grid that the queen is too large to fit through (called a ‘Queen excluder’). As the bees cannot raise brood above this queen excluder only honey is stored in the supers. As the season progresses the beekeeper adds more supers until the time to harvest the honey. A special one way valve is then fitted in place of the queen excluder and gradually all the bees are forced into the lowest part of the hive, the beekeeper can simply lift off the ‘super’ boxes containing the honey comb.
The honey is extracted from the comb using centrifugal force in a machine called a spinner looking much like an old-fashioned upright spin dryer.

No, the queen is simply an egg-laying machine. The queen bee has a smaller brain than a worker bee.