What Makes Up A Beehive?
We have all seen pictures of a beehive, white wooden boxes stacked on top of each other. Usually in the middle of nowhere and some look like they have been kicking around for decades. Do you know what actually makes up a hive though?
The Hive Structure
A beehive has 2 main components, these are a brood box and a honey super. What can vary is the number of each component in each hive configuration. Most beekeepers will work with a single brood box and 2 honey supers, but there are some beekeepers out there who experiment with different designs, some may have 2 brood boxes and 3 honey supers, while other configurations might contain a single brood box and 4 honey supers to maximize honey production. All of these configurations have their own challenges and may not work everywhere.
The Components
Lets start with the Brood box, this is the bottom most box in a hive. The brood box contains the entry/exit point of the hive, houses the queen and contains the brood. Brood is the encompassing term used to describe bee eggs, lave and pupa.
A brood box will contain 9 frames, a frame is what we call the wood structure that bees build the wax comb on. In a brood box this is called brood comb. Brood comb is quite dark in colour and is distinctive from familiar honeycomb. The comb is built by worker bees fairly quickly and is produced in various sizes depending on the type of bee they intend to nurture within it. The queen works from the centre frames out laying eggs, she can lay an egg every 20 seconds and will lay a few thousand per day. The worker bees will follow the cycle of the brood through the lave and pupa stages until a new bee emerges from the cell. Aside from brood, the brood box will also contain some honey and pollen that the workers can use to feed Drones and the Queen.
The next part of the hive is the honey super. Between the brood box and the first honey super there is a grill called a Queen Excluder. This prevents the Queen from entering the honey super and laying eggs in the honey cells. This keep the hive tidy and the brood where it is supposed to bee (pun intended!)
The honey super contains 10 frames that the workers will build honeycomb on. This comb is almost white and will house the honey that the bees produce. Some of these cells will also house pollen that the bees store to consume later.
Honey supers can be stacked on top of each other without needing anything in between, the bees will travel between each super filling these with yummy honey.