The Warre Store

First Shopping list

This page can serve as a checklist to help new beekeepers with placing their initial order from our beekeeping store. Items that are marked with an * can often be purchased locally at a hardware or big box store, but we also offer them for your convenience.

First, here are the bare necessities you'll need to get started:

• At least one Beehive.

• A hivetop feeder for each of your hives.

• Essential beekeeping gear

• *Spar urethane (for feeder prep only)

• Should you choose to do the assembly, you'll need *wood glue for assembling your hives and/or frames.

• *Simpson speed square (for assembling frames; modified hive only)

• *Tack hammer (for assembling frames; modified hive only)

• Beeswax and foundation (needed for modified hive only. See Note below)

Note: Beeswax is included with the purchase of any new top bar hive or hive body. Modified hives do not include beeswax. If you are going to install foundation in the frames of your modified hive (recommended), you'll still need to purchase at least one bar of wax, because you'll be leaving one frame in each box blank (with a waxed guide instead of foundation). If you don't want to use any foundation at all in your modified hive, you'll need to purchase one bar of wax per hive body. See "How to assemble a frame" for more information.

Some non-essential items that people frequently include in their initial order are:

• *Brad driver

• Additional hive bodies

• Bee escape board

• Sticky board

• Honey B Healthy

• Amino B Booster

• Tung oil

• Citrus Solvent

• Frame lifter hive tool

• Smoker fuel

• Hive staples

• Hive straps

• Robbing screens

• 1/2" shims

• Beetle traps

• Honey harvesting equipment

• Swarm traps and lures

As you can see, we offer everything you’ll need to keep bees except for the bees themselves. You can find a couple of packaged bee suppliers on our links page. Regardless of where you’ll get your bees, get them ordered right away because they sell out fast each spring.