Since BitlBee acts just like any other irc daemon, you can connect to it with your favorite irc client. Launch it and connect to localhost port 6667 (or whatever host/port you are running bitlbee on). Once you are connected to the BitlBee server, you are automatically joined to #bitlbee on that server. This channel acts like the 'buddy list' you have on the various other chat networks. The user 'root' always hangs around in #bitlbee and acts as your interface to bitlbee. All commands you give on #bitlbee are 'answered' by root. You can talk to by starting a query with them. In most irc clients, this can be done with either /msg <nick> <text> or /query <nick>. To keep the number of open query windows limited, you can also talk to people in the control channel, like <nick>: <text>.