A beehive is the central dwelling for a honey bee colony, a complex structure where bees live, store food, and raise their young. This intricate habitat provides a safe and efficient environment for thousands of individuals to collaborate. The hive supports the colony’s life cycle, from producing honey and beeswax to rearing new generations. Understanding its design and function reveals the sophisticated social organization that allows bee colonies to thrive.
Natural Bee Dwellings
In the wild, honey bees construct their dwellings in various natural cavities. Common locations include hollow trees, which offer protection from elements and predators. Bees may also establish colonies in rock crevices, providing a secure and temperature-stable environment. Abandoned animal burrows or sheltered parts of human-made structures can also serve as natural hive sites.
When bees select a natural dwelling, they build wax combs within the space. These wild hives feature organic, free-form construction, with combs often adhering directly to cavity walls. Bees seal unwanted openings with propolis, a resinous substance, to regulate internal temperature and deter intruders.
Human-Constructed Hives
Human-designed beehives facilitate beekeeping practices, enabling easier management of bee colonies, honey production, and pollination services. These hives are engineered to provide a controlled environment that benefits both bees and beekeepers. Their design allows for inspection, honey harvesting, and interventions to support colony health.
The Langstroth hive is widely used in beekeeping due to its modular design, featuring vertically stacked boxes with removable frames. This design was inspired by the discovery of “bee space,” a specific gap (6.4 to 9.5 mm) that bees do not fill with comb or propolis, allowing frames to be easily removed for inspection. Langstroth hives come in various depths, such as deeps for brood rearing and medium or shallow boxes for honey storage.
Other popular human-constructed hives include top-bar hives and Warre hives. Top-bar hives are horizontal structures where bees build combs downward from individual wooden bars, mimicking natural comb construction without frames. This design allows for less invasive inspection and aligns with natural beekeeping principles. Warre hives, also using top bars, are vertical and aim to replicate a tree cavity, encouraging bees to build comb in a more natural, undisturbed manner.
Components Within a Hive
Regardless of whether a hive is natural or human-made, its internal structure centers around the honeycomb, a marvel of natural engineering. Honeycomb consists of hexagonal cells constructed by bees from beeswax. The hexagonal shape is highly efficient, maximizing storage space while minimizing wax needed. Beeswax is secreted as flakes from glands on worker bees’ abdomens, then chewed and molded into shape.
These hexagonal cells serve multiple purposes within the hive. They store honey, the colony’s primary food source, and pollen, providing essential nutrients. Cells also house the brood—eggs, larvae, and pupae—as they develop into adult bees. Brood comb darkens over time due to cocoons and larval skins embedded within.
Beyond the honeycomb, bees use propolis, often called “bee glue,” to seal cracks and smooth internal surfaces. Propolis is a resinous mixture collected from tree buds and other botanical sources. Bees use it to strengthen the hive structure and provide antimicrobial protection, maintaining the hive’s integrity and sanitation.
The Bee Community
Within a beehive, the bee colony operates as a highly organized social unit, a superorganism where each member contributes to collective survival. The colony comprises three distinct types of bees, or castes, each with specialized roles.
At the center is the queen bee, the sole reproductive female responsible for laying thousands of eggs daily during peak season. Her pheromones regulate colony unity and influence other bees’ behavior. Worker bees constantly attend the queen, feeding, grooming, and cleaning her, allowing her to focus solely on egg-laying.
Worker bees are female bees that constitute the vast majority of the colony, often numbering tens of thousands. They perform diverse tasks throughout their lives, with duties changing as they age. Responsibilities include cleaning the hive, feeding larvae, caring for the queen, building beeswax combs, collecting nectar and pollen, guarding the hive entrance, and regulating hive temperature.
Drones are the male bees in the hive; their primary function is to mate with a virgin queen, typically from another colony, to ensure genetic diversity. Drones do not forage for food or perform other hive maintenance tasks; worker bees feed them. While their role is limited to reproduction, their presence can also contribute to hive temperature regulation.