Part of the reason in creating this blog was to share the ease of beekeeping! You do not need a lot of know-how, because after your first season there is more learning than most books teach. As with most things in life, you can spend as much as you want on this hobby. An aspect of beekeeping that could be expensive is the medication of hives. If you only have one hive (as I currently do) then purchasing any amount of medication seems cost inefficient.
The Honey Bee is an amazing social insect. While there are times for medication I feel that the hive should be given the opportunity to create anti-bodies for self-preservation. Will every hive survive? No. But beekeepers want to preserve EVERY hive, because they have placed such large amounts of money, resources and energy into each hive. It's time to allow nature to micro-evolve, to eradicate low disease-resistant colonies.
There is a school of beekeeping-thought that it is vital to provide preventative medications to combat a plethora of diseases that could effect the hive. The one thing that bothers me with this line of thinking is 1) I plan on eating a portion of the hive's honey, and I'd rather have no chemicals present in the hive; 2) bees have survived for thousands of years without these modern medications. They seemed to do just fine without them. Additionally, during this "era of medication" there has been a seemingly obvious rise in bee illness.
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