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Encyclopedia > Beehive (beekeeping)

Domesticated Western honey bees are kept in beehives. The bees use the hive space to raise brood and to store honey for the coming winter. A location where beehives are kept is known as an apiary. Binomial name Linnaeus, 1758 The Western honey bee or European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is a species of honey bee. ... An Apiary in South Carolina, Langstroth hives on pallets An apiary (also known in the US as a bee yard) is a place where beehives of honeybees are kept. ...

Wooden hives in Stripeikiai in Lithuania
Wooden hives in Stripeikiai in Lithuania

Contents

Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2560x1920, 1735 KB) Bee hives in honey making museum in Stripeikiai, Lithuania. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2560x1920, 1735 KB) Bee hives in honey making museum in Stripeikiai, Lithuania. ... Wooden beehives in the beekeeping museum in Stripeikiai Stripeikiai is the oldest village in Aukštaitija National Park. ...

Traditional beehives

Traditional beehives provided an enclosure for the bee colony but little more was needed. Because there is no internal structure provided for the bees to start from, the bees fill the space in the hive with comb -attached and cannot be moved without destroying it. This is sometimes called a 'fixed-frame' hive to differentiate it from the modern 'movable-frame' hives. Harvest generally destroyed the hives, though there were some adaptations with extra top baskets which could be removed when the bees filled them with honey. These were gradually supplanted with box hives of varying dimensions, with or without frames, and finally replaced by newer modern equipment. Honeycomb Honeycombs on a Sacred fig tree A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. ... A jar of honey, shown with a wooden honey server and scones/biscuits. ...


Honey from traditional hives was typically extracted by pressing - crushing the wax honeycomb to squeeze out the honey. Because of this harvest method, they typically provided more beeswax but far less honey than a modern hive. Beeswax cake Fresh wax scales (in the middle of the lower row) Beeswax is a product from a bee hive, specifically the hive of any species of honey bee (the genus Apis). ...


Skeps and other fixed-frame hives are no longer in wide use (and are illegal in many countries) because the bees and the comb cannot be inspected for disease or parasites without destruction of the honeycomb and usually the colony. A parasite is an organism that spends a significant portion of its life in or on the living tissue of a host organism and which causes harm to the host without immediately killing it. ...


There are three basic styles of traditional beehive; Tile hives, Skeps and Bee gums.


Tile hives

Clay tiles were the customary homes of the bees around the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Long cylinders of baked clay were used in ancient Egypt, the Middle East and to some extent in Greece and Italy. They sometimes were used singly, but more often stacked in rows to provide some shade, at least for those not on top. Keepers could smoke one end to drive the bees to the other end while they harvested honey. The Gay Head cliffs in Marthas Vineyard are made almost entirely of clay. ... The Mediterranean Sea is an intercontinental sea positioned between Europe to the north, Africa to the south and Asia to the east, covering an approximate area of 2. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ...


Skeps

Bee shelter with two skeps
Bee shelter with two skeps

In northern and western Europe, baskets made of coils of grass or straw, called skeps, were used. In the simplest form, there is a single entrance at the bottom of the skep. There is no internal structure except what the bees build themselves. Aside from the fact that it is not possible to inspect the interior of skeps for diseases and pests, the removal of honey often necessitated the destruction of the entire hive. Beekeepers often either drove the bees out of the skep, or killed them, and subsequently squeezed the entire skep in a vise of sorts in order to extract its honey. Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1136 × 852 pixel, file size: 246 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1136 × 852 pixel, file size: 246 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... World map showing the location of Europe. ... Subfamilies There are 7 subfamilies: Subfamily Arundinoideae Subfamily Bambusoideae Subfamily Centothecoideae Subfamily Chloridoideae Subfamily Panicoideae Subfamily Pooideae Subfamily Stipoideae The true grasses are monocotyledonous plants (Class Liliopsida) in the Family Poaceae, also known as Gramineae. ...


Later designs included a smaller woven basket on top with a small hole to the main skep. This acted as a crude super, allowing the harvesting of some honey with less destruction of brood and bees.

Traditional manufacture of skeps from straw in England
Traditional manufacture of skeps from straw in England

Download high resolution version (800x663, 85 KB)Making traditional beehives called skeps. ... Download high resolution version (800x663, 85 KB)Making traditional beehives called skeps. ... Bales of straw bundles of rice straw Pile of straw bales, sheltered under a tarpaulin Straw is an agricultural byproduct, the dry stalk of a cereal plant, after the nutrient grain or seed has been removed. ... Motto (French) God and my right Anthem No official anthem - the United Kingdom anthem God Save the Queen is commonly used England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto) Unified  -  by Athelstan 927 AD  Area  -  Total 130...

Bee gums

In Eastern, particularly southeastern USA, sections of hollow trees were used up until the 20th century. They were called "gums" because they often were from red gum trees.


Sections of the hollow trees were set upright in "bee yards" or apiaries. Sometimes sticks or crossed sticks were placed under a board cover to give an attachment for the honeycomb. As with skeps, harvest of honey from these destroyed the colony. Often the human bee "robber" would sulphur the bees, killing them all, before even opening their nest. This was done by inserting a metal container of burning sulphur into the gum. General Name, Symbol, Number sulfur, S, 16 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 16, 3, p Appearance lemon yellow Standard atomic weight 32. ...


Modern beehives

Dadant-Blath beehives in Serbia
Dadant-Blath beehives in Serbia

One of the very first beehive frame was invented by the founder of rational beekeeping in Russia, Petro Prokopovych in 1814. However for easy operations in beehive the spaces between elements need to be correct. The correct distance between combs had been described in 1845 by Jan Dzierżon as 1½ inches from the center of one top bar to the center of the next one. In 1848 Dzierzon introduced grooves into the hive’s side walls replacing the strips of wood for moving top bars. The grooves had been 8 x 8 mm – exact average between 1/4 and 3/8 of an inch, which is range recently called bee space. The Langstroth hive was the first successful top-opened hive with movable frames. Langstroth hive was however direct descendant of Dzierzon’s hive designs. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1632x1224, 403 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Beehive (beekeeping) Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1632x1224, 403 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Beehive (beekeeping) Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to... Anthem Serbia() on the European continent() Capital (and largest city) Belgrade Official languages Serbian 1 Recognised regional languages Hungarian, Croatian, Slovak, Romanian, Rusyn 2 Albanian 3 Government Semi-presidential republic  -  President Boris Tadić  -  Prime Minister Vojislav KoÅ¡tunica Establishment  -  Formation 9th century   -  First unified state c. ... A frame in a beehive is the structural element that holds the honeycomb or brood comb. ... Petro Prokopovych Petro Prokopovych (1775–1850, Ukrainian: ) was the founder of rational beekeeping. ... Year 1814 (MDCCCXIV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ... 1845 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Jan Dzierżon Jan Dzierżon Jan Dzierżon (Polish) or Johann Dzierzon (German) (16 January 1811 – 26 October 1906) was Polish apiarist best known for his discovery of parthenogenesis among bees and for designing a movable-frame beehive. ... Langstroth hives on pallets The Langstroth bee hive is the standard beehive used in many parts of the world for bee keeping. ... Langstroth hives on pallets The Langstroth bee hive is the standard beehive used in many parts of the world for bee keeping. ... Jan Dzierżon Jan Dzierżon Jan Dzierżon (Polish) or Johann Dzierzon (German) (16 January 1811 – 26 October 1906) was an Polish apiarist best known for his discovery of parthenogenesis among bees and for designing a movable-frame beehive. ...


Modern hive is a construction made up of a series of square or rectangular boxes without tops or bottoms placed one on top of another. Inside the boxes frames are hung in parallel. The minimum size of the hive is dependent on outside air temperature and potential food sources in the winter months. The colder the winter, the larger the winter cluster and food stores need to be. In the regions with severe winter weather a basketball shaped cluster survives in a double box. In temperate and equatorial regions a winter cluster will survive in a single box or in a nuc (Short for nucleus). In beekeeping, a winter cluster is a well-defined cluster of honey bees that forms in a colony when the air temperature dips below 54 - 57° F (12 -14° C). ... Nucs, or Nucleus Colonies, are small honey bee colonies created from larger colonies. ...


There are several types of modern hive in common use, differing mainly in size and number of frames used. Types include Smith, Segeberger Beute (German), Frankenbeute (German), Normalmass (German), Langstroth hive, Modified Commercial and Modified Dadant, top-bar or Kenya-type hives, plus regional variations such as the British Modified National Hive. The Langstroth hive is the most common worldwide. Former Aston Villa midfielder Jay Smith has seen his career tainted with injuries and bad luck. ... Charles Dadant Charles Dadant (1817-05-20 - 1902-07-26) was a French-American beekeeper. ...


Langstroth hives

Langstroth frame of honeycomb with honey in the upper left and pollen in most of the rest of the cells
Langstroth frame of honeycomb with honey in the upper left and pollen in most of the rest of the cells

Named for their inventor, Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth, these hives are not the only hives of this style, but they are the most common. These hives are typified by removable frames which allow the apiarist to inspect for diseases and parasites. Movable frames also allow the beekeeper to more easily split the hive to make new colonies. Langstroth presented his design in 1860 and it has become the standard style hive for 75% of the world's beekeeping. Frame of honeycomb with pollen Image copyleft: Image taken by me, released under GFDL Pollinator 03:33, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC) ( ) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Frame of honeycomb with pollen Image copyleft: Image taken by me, released under GFDL Pollinator 03:33, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC) ( ) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Honeycomb Honeycombs on a Sacred fig tree A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. ... A jar of honey, shown with a wooden honey server and scones/biscuits. ... SEM image of pollen grains from a variety of common plants: sunflower (Helianthus annuus), morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea), prairie hollyhock (Sidalcea malviflora), oriental lily (Lilium auratum), evening primrose (Oenothera fruticosa), and castor bean (Ricinus communis). ... Lorenzo Langstroth (1810-1895) Rev. ...


Langstroth hive make use of the discovery of bee space, a characteristic of Western honey bees which causes them to propolize small spaces (less than 1/4 inch), gluing wooden parts together and to fill larger spaces (more than about 3/8 inch) with wax comb but to hold the intermediate space open for traffic channels for the bees. His cleverly designed hive makes use of this bee space so that frames are neither glued together nor jammed up with burr comb - comb joining adjacent frames. Langstroth hives on pallets The Langstroth bee hive is the standard beehive used in many parts of the world for bee keeping. ... Propolis is a wax-like resinous substance collected by honey bees from tree buds or other botanical sources and used as cement and to seal cracks or open spaces in the hive. ...


Langstroth hives make use of standardized sizes of hive bodies and frames to ensure that parts are interchangeable and that the frames will remain relatively easy to remove, inspect, and replace without killing the bees. Langstroth hive bodies are rectangular wooden or styrofoam boxes that can be stacked to expand the usable space for the bees.


Langstroth frames are thin rectangular structures made of wood or plastic and which have a wax or plastic foundation on which the bees draw out the comb. The frames hold the beeswax honeycomb formed by the bees. Ten frames side-to-side will fill the hive body and leave exactly the right amount of bee space between each frame and between the end frames and the hive body. Beeswax cake Fresh wax scales (in the middle of the lower row) Beeswax is a product from a bee hive, specifically the hive of any species of honey bee (the genus Apis). ... Honeycomb Honeycombs on a Sacred fig tree A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. ...


Langstroth frames are often reinforced with wire which makes it possible to extract honey in centrifuges which spin the honey out of the frames. The empty frames can be returned to the beehive for use next season. Since bees are estimated to use as much food to make one kilogram of beeswax as they would to make eight kilograms of honey, the ability to reuse comb can significantly increase honey production.


Top-bar hives

These hives were developed as a lower-cost alternative to the standard Langstroth hives and equipment. They are used by some devotees in the US, but are much more popular, due to their simplicity and low cost, in developing countries. Top-bar hives also have movable frames and make use of the concept of bee space. Top-bar hives are a style of beehive used for beekeeping. ...


The top-bar hive gets its name because the frames of the hive have only a top bar, not sides or a bottom bar. The beekeeper does not provide a foundation (or provides only a fractional foundation) for the bees to build from. The bees build the comb so it hangs down from the top bar.


Unlike the Langstroth hive, the honey cannot be extracted by centrifuging because a top-bar frame does not have reinforced foundation or a full frame. Because the bees have to rebuild the comb after each harvest, a top-bar hive will yield more beeswax but less honey. However, like the Langstroth hive, the bees can be induced to store the honey separately from the areas where they are raising the brood so that bees are less likely to be killed when harvesting from a top-bar hive than when harvesting from a skep.


Beehive symbolism

The beehive (usually as an iconified skep) is one of the symbols of the US state of Utah. It is associated with the honey bee, an early symbol of Mormon pioneer industry and resourcefulness. (See Deseret) Look up icon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic  - President George Walker Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from... Official language(s) English Capital Salt Lake City Largest city Salt Lake City Area  Ranked 13th  - Total 84,889 sq mi (219,887 km²)  - Width 270 miles (435 km)  - Length 350 miles (565 km)  - % water 3. ... The honeybee is a colonial insect that is often maintained, fed, and transported by farmers. ... A statue commemorating the Mormon pioneers The Mormon Pioneers were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who migrated across the United States from the midwest to the Salt Lake Valley in what is today the State of Utah. ... It has been suggested that Nation of Deseret be merged into this article or section. ...


The beehive is an important symbol in Freemasonry, holding a prominent place in the lecture of the Master Mason degree, and is a symbol of industry and cooperation. Freemason and Freemasons redirect here. ... A Master Mason is the designation of a Freemason who has completed the Third Degree in Masonic Lodge (aka Blue Lodge or Craft Masonry). ...


Likewise, the beehive is considered a symbol of industry in heraldry. Heraldry in its most general sense encompasses all matters relating to the duties and responsibilities of officers of arms. ...


In Wellington, New Zealand, the round building used for Parliamentary offices is known as the "Beehive". For other uses, see Wellington (disambiguation). ... The Beehive, Wellington The Beehive is the common name for the Executive Wing of the New Zealand Parliament Buildings, located at the corner of Molesworth Street and Lambton Quay, Wellington. ...


See also

An apidictor is an instrument which measures and records the sound in a beehive. ... A bee bole is a cavity or alcove in a wall or a separate free-standing structure set against a wall (the Scots word bole means a recess in a wall). ...

Patents

External links and references

 

Honey bee types and characteristics (edit)
Queen bees
Worker and drone bees
Worker bee | Laying worker bee | Drone
Lifecycle
Beehive | Honey bee life cycle | Brood
Bee learning and communication | Swarming
Western honey bee subspecies and breeds
Buckfast bee | Carniolan honey bee | European dark bee | Italian bee
Africanized bee | Apis mellifera scutellata
Cultivation
Beekeeping | Beeswax | Honey
Apiary | Beehive | Langstroth hive | Top-bar hive | Apiology
Lists
Topics in beekeeping | Honey bee races
Diseases of the honey bee

 

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