The term “bee box” is a common phrase used by the public to describe the wooden structures that house managed honeybee colonies. In beekeeping, these structures are properly called “hives” or “apiaries.” They are specifically engineered habitats designed to facilitate colony health, honey production, and management by a beekeeper. These artificial dwellings allow for the regular inspection of the colony for disease and parasites, which is not possible in a natural setting.
The Standard: The Langstroth Hive
The most widely used design across the globe is the Langstroth hive. It became the industry standard due to a revolutionary discovery by American apiarist Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, who patented his design in 1852. He built it around the concept of “bee space,” a specific gap—between 1/4 and 3/8 of an inch—that bees naturally leave unobstructed for movement.
If the gap is smaller than this range, bees will seal it with propolis, a resinous material they use to fill cracks. If the gap is larger, they will fill it with unwanted comb, making management difficult. Langstroth’s insight allowed for the creation of truly removable frames. These are vertical wooden rectangles that slide into the hive boxes, allowing a beekeeper to lift out a frame of comb for inspection or honey harvesting without destroying the comb.
The Langstroth hive is a modular, vertical stack of rectangular boxes. It typically has a larger box for the brood chamber at the bottom and smaller boxes, or “supers,” stacked on top for honey storage. This vertical, standardized design made large-scale commercial beekeeping economically viable. The interchangeable nature of the frames and boxes allows beekeepers to easily expand the hive or rearrange components.
Alternative Beekeeping Structures
While the Langstroth hive dominates commercial operations, other designs offer alternatives that prioritize low-intervention or more natural-style beekeeping.
The Top Bar hive is a single, long, horizontal trough that does not use stacked boxes. Instead of full frames, the bees build their comb downward from simple wooden bars laid across the top. This horizontal structure eliminates the need for heavy lifting, as the beekeeper removes only one individual bar and its attached comb at a time. Top Bar hives are typically “foundationless,” meaning the bees draw their own comb without a pre-formed wax or plastic sheet. This natural comb-building is favored by some, though the lack of structural support makes the comb fragile and usually requires the honey to be harvested using a crush-and-strain method.
A third design is the Warré hive, sometimes called the “people’s hive.” It shares the vertical stacking of the Langstroth but uses a management style that mimics a natural tree cavity. The Warré uses smaller, square boxes and utilizes simple top bars instead of full frames. Unlike the Langstroth, beekeepers add new, empty boxes to the bottom of the stack, a process called “nadir-ing.” This encourages the colony to expand downward as they would in nature. This method minimizes disturbance, as the brood nest remains in the upper boxes and the honey is stored below. The design often includes an insulated top section, which helps regulate temperature and moisture within the cavity.
Natural Bee Dwellings
Before the invention of engineered hives, honeybees established their colonies in natural bee dwellings. These are typically protected, enclosed spaces that offer thermal regulation and protection from the elements. The most common natural home is a hollow in a large, old tree, often within the trunk or a thick limb. Bees will also establish feral colonies in sheltered rock crevices or within the walls and chimneys of abandoned human structures.
The bees select cavities that provide a significant thickness of material surrounding the nest, such as several inches of wood. This thick-walled enclosure is important because it stabilizes the internal temperature, which the bees must maintain at a specific range for successful brood rearing.
In these natural settings, the honeybees construct multiple vertical sheets of honeycomb parallel to each other and suspended from the cavity ceiling. The combs are spaced apart by the same bee space that Langstroth later formalized in his design, allowing the bees to move freely between them. By studying these natural nest characteristics—a protected, insulated cavity with vertically hanging comb—beekeepers were able to design the various artificial hives that are used today.