Your first bee suit: what actually matters in season one

Nearly every beekeeper's first suit is chosen on price, and nearly every one of them is replaced within two seasons. Not because it failed, but because it turned out to be unbearable to wear.

Four things decide whether a first bee suit is still in use in year two. Only one of them is the fabric, and it is not the one most buying guides start with.

1. The veil, which is the whole suit

Everything else on a suit protects skin you could cover with thick clothing. The veil protects your face and your eyes, and there is no substitute for it.

What matters is whether the mesh is held away from your face and stays there while you move. A veil that touches your cheek is not protecting your cheek — a bee stinging the outside of the mesh reaches the skin behind it. Cheap veils sag as soon as you look down, which is the position you are in for most of an inspection.

Check three things: that the mesh is stiffened or framed rather than loose, that the hood holds its shape when you tilt your head forward, and that you can see clearly through it in bright sun. Poor visibility makes you slow, and slow inspections mean more time with the hive open.

2. Slack, not size

A suit is not clothing and should not fit like it. Protection comes from the gap between the outer surface of the fabric and your skin — a sting has to bridge that gap to reach you, and a few millimetres of air defeats most of them.

This is why a suit that looks correct in the mirror is usually too small. Order by chest measurement, allow room for what you wear underneath, and accept that it will look loose. That slack is doing the work.

The exception is at the wrists and ankles, which have to close properly. Elastic that has gone soft is the most common way a bee gets inside a suit that is otherwise perfectly good.

3. The zips, and how they are set

Zips are the part that fails first, and the veil zip is the one that matters. It runs around a curve, it is opened and closed at every inspection, and it is holding shut the one opening that must not come apart while you are working.

A veil zip that is machine-run around that curve tends to bind. Set by hand it runs smoothly, and a zip that runs smoothly is one you actually close all the way. Ask, or look at the stitching where the zip meets the hood.

Two-way zips on the body are worth having for a different reason: they let you open the suit from the bottom to reach a pocket without unzipping your chest.

4. Whether you will actually wear it in July

The suit that protects you best is the one you are wearing. A heavy cotton suit is genuinely protective and genuinely unbearable at thirty degrees, and a beekeeper who has stopped wearing the jacket because it is too hot is not protected at all.

If your inspections are early mornings in a mild climate, cotton is fine and cheaper. If you are working in real heat, ventilated construction stops being a luxury — see ventilated versus cotton for how that decision actually goes.

What not to spend money on yet

Two things are usually oversold to first-time buyers.

• Colour and styling. Bees respond to dark colours and to movement, not to whether your suit is white or khaki. Anything pale is fine.
• A made-to-measure suit, in year one. Custom fit is worth it once you know how you work and what annoys you about a standard suit. Before that you do not yet know what to specify.

Gloves are the opposite: worth buying properly straight away, because thin gloves make you clumsy and clumsy hands crush bees.

The short version

Buy a suit with a veil that holds its shape, order it loose, check the zips and elastic, and be honest about how hot it gets where you keep bees. That is the whole decision. Everything else can wait until you have a season behind you and know what you actually want changed.