If you have some basic carpentry skills you can build a top bar hive which is what most beginners start with. They are frameless so the comb hangs from the bar. You have to be more careful opening the hives since without frames the comb is more fragile and harvesting is a bit messier since you would have to use a potato masher and a colander to mash the honey from the comb. You would not need an extractor. Warre and other hives are also sold as kits which is a little cheaper, you can put them together yourself. You can build any of the bee boxes if you have carpentry skills and cheap lumber. In Hawaii people do build their own starter hives, but unless they work in construction, lumber is not cheap. Paint needs to be non-toxic so while you can pick any color, you have to make sure it is safe for the bees. You only paint the outside of the hive and bottom board, but the bees do hang out there.
Swarms fill up on honey before they leave the hive and while they are searching for a new home they have no brood or honey to protect, only the queen, so they tend not to be agressive. But it still recommended to have protective gear.
Some bee keepers do wear shorts and tank tops and no gloves when beekeeping, but they do get stung almost every time. A long sleeved heavy jacket, pants and boots will do. The jacket needs to be able to zip up without gaps for the bees to get in. Then you really can get away with a hat and veil and a lot of duck tape to seal everything up. You don't need the leather gloves. I got stung right through the leather glove. long sleeved dishwashing gloves work just as well, but you need to tape up the cuff. If you join a bee club you can learn a lot and if you have your hives ready when swarm season comes, you can have your name put on a list and they will call you when someone has a swarm they want removed. Be aware though, that most homeowners usually have not called the beekeepers first and may have sprayed the swarm with insecticide making them useless. If the swarm is not accessible, you will be spending your time and gas going out there and still not come away with anything. Besides the, hive you will need equipment like a bee vacuum and box to put the swarm in once you capture it. Even if you can get it home, the queen may not like the accommodations and they will fly off again. Most people will requeen a captured swarm which means that they have to buy one and have it shipped. The old queen left with the swarm so you don't know how long she will live or her temperament. If you want docile bees you have to try to get a good queen.
https://www.bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm
We do have a new member who is a carpenter, but the rest of us are not, so we purchased the economy jackets (not the full suit), gloves, hive tools, and initially we were given the starter hives and boxes. They were over twenty years old and in my climate, wood rots and gets termites, so we are replacing them now and we bought hive kits which turn out to be the better buy than buying the pieces separately. The initial costs are high but the equipment should be good for years. If you can find someone selling old equipment you have to look at the condition they are in. If you have diseases like American fould brood, it does not matter how old your hives are, you have to seal the bees in the hive; burn it all and start over.
Selling honey for us offsets the cost of maintaining the hives. If you want to sell honey you have to look at your local laws. Ours requires that someone take the food safety class and be certified and we have labeling requirements.
The Dept of Ag is making it harder to import queens. We may have to start trying to rear our own queens.
The easiest way if you only need one queen to make a queenless split of the right aged larvae from a healthy colony and get them to rear the new queen in a nuc. This takes the most time and means you have to realize the hive is queenless before it is too late to save them. This is a gamble since all your hopes are pinned to the survival and successful mating of this one queen.
If the nuc produces a lot of queen cells you can hedge your bets by punching existing unopened queen cells or grafting the right aged larvae and putting them in queen cups.
Most people want non-aggressive queens because they are easier to work with and have as neighbors if the hives are in an urban area. Queens can be bred with desirable traits like hygenic queens. Most of the time people just need a queen to save the colony. Aggressive hives are harder to work with but they tend to be stronger colonies.
https://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm
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