Whoever's Calm and Sensible is Insane or Hive Tools

Guitarists have strings, and photographers have cameras. These are the basics required to do what they do. I have these:

Walter T. Kelley delivered a box to my house last Wednesday full of only the finest. 

This is a smoker. It is filled with organic fuel such as burlap or dried leaves. The smoke is wafted over the bees and they simmer down. No one is sure why, though there is one theory that says smoke is sort of nasty and no body wants to stick their face in it, especially if they can't blink.

These are frames. There are basically three types of frames, show here are deeps and shallows. There is a medium size also available. Popularly, there is a third component I will not be utilizing since I am going as down home and natural as possible with my approach. A wax "foundation" can be inserted to give the bees a head start on drawing the comb out.  I am using "foundationless" frames, which means that instead of a flat piece of prepressed wax hung on the frames where those dots are, there will be nothing. Instead, the bees will hang down from a wedge (not visible in this picture), along the under side of the top bar and start drawing the comb from scratch. They can make it to suit their needs.  

This is a hive tool. Imagine a very lady like crowbar, and you've pictured a hive tool. I hear it's useful for all sorts of things. Bees like to glue everything together, so it can be used for prying open the lid of the hive or squashing hive beetles. I hate hive beetles and will squash their weasely black guts out every chance I get. 

This is a bee brush, used for ever so gently brushing the ladies from the honey comb so I can look for signs that the queen is doing her job. This is indicated by a good number of brood at a variety of life stages. 

This is a close up of my hat and veil. I am opting out of the bee hazmat suit. I don't even have a good reason, except that it just didn't feel like it was for me.

Soon I hope to have pictures of my completed hive.