What to Buy to Start Beekeeping in Florida — Beginner's Checklist

Starting beekeeping can feel like learning a new language while reading a phone-book-sized catalog in a foreign currency. Deeps and mediums, fencing veils and round veils, nucs and packages, eight-frame and ten-frame, telescoping covers and migratory covers — and then a hundred online voices telling you that whatever you just bought is wrong.

Here's the good news, from a team that has kept bees in Florida for more than twenty years and manages thousands of colonies across the state: you need far less than the catalogs suggest, and most of the gear is inexpensive. The hive itself is the only meaningful cost, and your bees are the only thing that truly determines whether your first year goes well.

This guide cuts the list down to what genuinely matters — and it's written for Florida, not a Northern Cold climate state. You won't be wrapping hives for winter or building candy boards here. Your challenges are heat, humidity, small hive beetles, and varroa mites, and we've sized the list accordingly.

A quick note on the costs below: they're 2026 ballparks from major suppliers, meant to set expectations, not quote you to the penny. Prices move, and a good local pickup can beat shipping every time.

The short version: your shopping list

If you only read one thing, read this. Here is everything you need to start one hive in Florida, with a price and a place to buy it. Work down the list, check each box, and you're done.

All-in, that's about $500–$850 for one complete hive, fully stocked, with bees.

A few notes to keep it simple:

• Get your bees from us; get your gear anywhere. We've linked one trusted national supplier above for convenience, but any major beekeeping supplier carries the same items.
• Want to buy gear in one click? A complete starter kit bundles the hive, smoker, hive tool, fuel, and brush together — that's rows 1 and 3 in a single purchase.
• Order your nuc early. Heritage nucs are pickup-only at our Myakka City farm and sell out every season — reserve before you buy the rest, so your bees and your equipment arrive on the same timeline.

That's the whole list. Everything else can wait until year two. If you'd like to understand why each item is on here — and the Florida-specific reasons behind the choices — keep reading.

1. The hive

This is your single biggest purchase and the one decision worth getting right. For new beekeepers we recommend a standard Langstroth hive — the familiar stacked-box hive. It's the most supported, most documented, and most resellable system, and every piece of equipment in this guide is built around it.

A complete hive is really a stack of parts:

• Bottom board — the floor. In Florida, a screened bottom board is worth it: it improves ventilation in our heat and helps you monitor mites.
• Brood boxes (deeps) — where the colony lives and the queen lays. Start with one or two deeps.
• Frames and foundation — the removable panels the bees build comb on (usually 8 or 10 per box).
• Inner cover and outer (telescoping) cover — the lid system.
• Entrance reducer — a small but important piece in Florida; it helps a young colony defend against robbing and beetles.

The easy button: buy a complete hive kit rather than sourcing parts à la carte. A painted, assembled kit removes the guesswork and the afternoon of assembly.

Eight-frame or ten-frame? Ten-frame holds more bees and honey with fewer boxes to manage. Eight-frame boxes are lighter to lift. For most beginners either is fine — pick eight-frame if lifting a full box of honey (40+ lbs) is a concern.

If you're starting with a Heritage Bee Farm nuc (our recommendation in Section 4), make sure your hive has a deep brood box with at least five empty frames ready to receive it. Our nuc frames are standard deep size and drop straight into 8- or 10-frame deep equipment — but the box needs to be assembled and waiting at your apiary before pickup day, not after.

2. Protecting yourself

You do not need to look like an astronaut, but you do need to feel calm and protected — a nervous beekeeper makes nervous bees. The real question in Florida isn't how much protection, it's how cool it keeps you.

• Minimum: a ventilated jacket with attached veil. Covers you where it counts and is far cooler than a full suit.
• Better for beginners: a full ventilated (3-layer mesh) suit. More coverage, more confidence, and the mesh breathes in our heat. Avoid the cheap single-layer cotton suits — they're hot and bees can sting through them.
• Gloves: goatskin or leather gloves give the most protection; nitrile or ventilated gloves give more dexterity. Many beekeepers keep both.

3. The three tools you actually need

Tools are the cheapest part of beekeeping and the easiest place to over-buy. You need exactly three to start.

• Hive tool — a flat pry bar for separating boxes and frames the bees have glued together with propolis. You will use it every single visit. Buy two; you'll lose one.
• Smoker — calms the colony and masks alarm pheromone. Get a larger stainless smoker with a heat guard — small ones go out constantly and are a frustration. Have fuel on hand (pine straw, burlap, or pellets).
• Bee brush — for gently moving bees off a frame. Soft and simple.

4. The bees

This is the part that actually makes you a beekeeper — and the most important purchase you'll make. The hive is just a box until there are bees in it, and the quality of those bees decides your first year more than any other choice on this list.

For a new beekeeper in Florida, our recommendation is simple: start with a 5-frame nucleus colony — a "nuc" — from Heritage Bee Farm. A nuc is a small, already-functioning colony rather than a loose box of bees, and it skips the hardest, most failure-prone weeks of getting started.

Why a nuc, and why ours

We started the way most people do — with two packages of bees our very first year. The next year we switched to five nucs, and the difference was night and day. By our fourth year we were bringing home fifty at a time. (One of those trips, our whole family hauled fifty nucs from Georgia back to Florida in our 15-passenger van — and learned that "closed up" is a relative term. Every time we stopped for fuel, a little cloud of escapees drifted out over the gas pumps.) We sell nucs today because they are what we would want a new beekeeper we cared about to start with.

A package of bees spends its first four to six weeks just trying to become a colony — the bees have to accept a caged queen, draw comb from bare foundation, and build a population before any real growth happens. A nuc has already done all of that. Our $195 Heritage Bee Farm nuc arrives as a working family:

• An actively laying queen, raised from our own carefully selected breeder stock and confirmed laying before pickup
• Five full-depth Langstroth frames — two of brood in all stages (eggs, larvae, and capped worker brood), one of honey and pollen, and two more drawn frames with food stores
• A full covering of bees across all five frames — nurse bees, house bees, and foragers already working together
• Drawn comb — one of the most valuable things you can hand a new colony, so the queen can expand her brood nest immediately
• A durable corrugated travel box that's yours to keep and reuse for future splits or swarm catches

Each nuc represents six to eight weeks of skilled work before it ever reaches you, and strong colonies from a nuc frequently produce harvestable honey in their first season — something a package rarely does.

Bought a Flow Hive — or thinking about one? A nuc is the ideal way to populate it. A Flow Hive is essentially a clever honey super sitting on a standard Langstroth brood box, and that brood box still has to be built into a strong, established colony before the flow frames ever fill. A nuc gives you a laying queen and drawn comb on day one, so your colony builds up fast and is far more likely to be ready to work those flow frames in its first season. Just transfer your five nuc frames into the brood box, exactly as you would with any other hive.

How buying a nuc actually works

A few things to know before you order — they affect your equipment and your calendar:

• Pickup only, at our Myakka City farm. Live nucs can't be shipped safely. Pickup is on Saturdays during the season; colonies are closed up the night before so all the foragers are home, and early-morning pickup (before the heat) is best.
• Have your hive ready before pickup day. You'll transfer the five nuc frames into a deep brood box within a day or two, so your box needs five empty frames ready to surround them, on a bottom board with covers in place and the entrance reducer set small. (See Section 1.)
• Our season runs February through October — far longer than most of the country. An early-spring pickup gives your colony the entire nectar flow to build on.
• Order early. We sell out every season, spring dates first. The beekeepers who reserve in January and February are on the schedule before most people start thinking about it.

Reserve your 5-frame nuc →

Not local? Start with a queen

If you're outside pickup range but already have drawn comb or a colony to build on, our mated queens ship nationwide via UPS Next Day Air — the same genetics behind our nucs. A quality queen is also what you'll reach for later to requeen or expand. Shop mated queens →

(A package of loose bees is the other option you'll see advertised — cheaper up front, but slower, riskier, and harder for a beginner. We don't recommend starting there.)

5. Feeding

A new colony almost always needs feeding to get established, and Florida's nectar calendar has gaps that catch beginners off guard.

• A feeder — an entrance feeder, a hive-top feeder, or an in-hive frame feeder. Any of them works; an in-hive feeder reduces robbing.
• Sugar — plain white cane sugar mixed 1:1 with water makes the syrup that helps bees draw comb and build strength. Buy it in bulk.
• Pollen substitute (optional to start) — useful during protein-scarce stretches.

6. The Florida pest plan (this is what's different)

Most beginner guides are written for cold climates and spend their energy on winterizing. In Florida, your two real adversaries are varroa mites and small hive beetles — and managing them is the difference between a colony that thrives and one that quietly collapses.

Varroa mites — the universal threat

Varroa is the number-one killer of honey bee colonies everywhere, and our near-year-round brood cycle means mites can breed almost continuously here. You don't treat blindly — you monitor, then treat when levels cross a threshold.

• A mite test — an alcohol wash or sugar-roll jar lets you measure your mite load. Cheap and essential.
• A treatment — there are several approved options (oxalic acid, formic acid, amitraz-based strips, and others), each with its own timing and rules about whether honey supers can be on the hive. We'll cover choosing and rotating treatments in a separate post; for now, just know you'll need a plan and a product on the shelf.

Small hive beetles — the Florida specialty

Our warm, humid climate is close to ideal for the small hive beetle, and they will find your hive. The defenses are simple:

• Keep colonies strong — a populous colony polices beetles; a weak one gets overrun.
• In-hive beetle traps — small oil traps that hang between frames or sit on the bottom board.
• Full sun and good ventilation — beetles favor shade and damp.

What you do not need to buy yet

This list saves new beekeepers hundreds of dollars and a closet full of regret:

• Honey extractor and uncapping gear. You likely won't harvest a surplus your first season, and a colony needs its first-year honey to survive. When you do harvest, many local clubs rent extractors for a few dollars — no need to own a $300 machine.
• A refractometer, a dozen extra boxes, fancy frame perches, and gadgets. Buy them when a real need shows up, not before.
• Multiple treatment products "just in case." Buy what your monitoring tells you to use.

Spend the money you save on a second hive instead. It's worth far more to a beginner than any gadget.

Putting it together: three budget tiers

The bees are a fixed, known cost: a Heritage Bee Farm nuc is $195. Everything else is a range that depends on how much you buy new versus borrow, build, or pick up locally. These tiers assume new equipment; a starter kit that bundles the hive, tools, and protective gear can shave the total — just confirm it includes frames with foundation.

Where to buy in Florida

Live bees (nucs and queens): Start local. Heritage Bee Farm raises nucs and mated queens proven in Florida's climate and pest pressure — the head start that matters most.

Equipment: The major national suppliers all ship to Florida and carry everything in this guide — Mann Lake, Dadant, Betterbee, and Blue Sky Bee Supply. Dadant operates a branch in High Springs, Florida, which can save you shipping if you're able to pick up. Local bee-supply shops and club group-buys are also worth checking.

Florida resources worth knowing:

• FDACS apiary registration & inspection. Florida requires honey bee colonies to be registered with the state, and the apiary inspection program is a free resource for new beekeepers — verify current requirements before you install bees.
• Your local county bee club. The single best free resource a beginner has: hands-on mentorship, group equipment buys, and people who keep bees on your exact block.
• UF/IFAS Honey Bee Research & Extension Laboratory for Florida-specific, research-backed guidance.

A final word

The gear is the easy part. Beekeeping is hard — anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't done it long. We've lost plenty of hives over the years, and you will too. What carries a new beekeeper through isn't the most expensive suit or the cleverest gadget; it's healthy, locally adapted bees, a simple plan for mites and beetles, and the willingness to keep showing up and learning.

Someone told us early on that there are two kinds of people who get bees: beekeepers and bee havers. The bee havers figure they'll set a hive in the backyard and collect honey, and most of them are gone within a season or two. The beekeepers expect to lose one now and then, learn from it, and come back the next spring. Start with good bees and the mindset of a keeper, and you'll already be ahead of most of the people who came and went before you.

When you're ready for Florida-raised bees to start your first hive, reach out to our team or browse our nucs and queens. We've helped a lot of people take this first step.

Reserve your Florida nuc →

Heritage Bee Farm is a family-run commercial apiary in Myakka City, Florida, managing thousands of colonies in our area.

Frequently asked questions