A beehive is an enclosed structure which houses honey bees, subgenus Honey bee. Honey bees live in the beehive, raising their young and producing honey as part of their seasonal cycle. Though the word beehive is used to describe the nest of any bee colony, scientific and professional literature distinguishes nest from hive. Nest is used to discuss colonies that house themselves in natural or artificial cavities or are hanging and exposed. The term hive is used to describe a manmade structure to house a honey bee nest. Several species of Apis live in colonies. But for honey production, the western honey bee ( Apis mellifera) and the eastern honey bee ( Apis cerana) are the main species kept in hives.University of Florida - Apis cerana - http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/bees/Apis_cerana.htmUniversity of Florida - Apis mellifera - http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/MISC/BEES/euro_honey_bee.htm
The nest's internal structure is a densely packed group of hexagonal prismatic cells made of beeswax, called a honeycomb. The bees use the cells to store food (honey and pollen) and to house the Bee brood (eggs, larvae, and pupae).
Beehives serve several purposes. These include producing honey, pollinating nearby crops, housing bees for apitherapy treatment, and mitigating the effects of colony collapse disorder. In North America, hives are commonly transported so bees can pollinate crops elsewhere. Several have been issued for beehive designs.
The bees often smooth the bark surrounding the nest entrance and coat the cavity walls with a thin layer of hardened plant resin called propolis. Honeycombs are attached to the walls along the cavity tops and sides, but the bees leave passageways along the comb edges. The standard nest architecture for all honeybees is similar: honey is stored in the upper part of the comb; beneath it are rows of pollen-storage cells, worker-brood cells, and drone-brood cells, in that order. The peanut queen bee cells are normally built at the lower edge of the comb.
The archaeologist Amihai Mazar cites 30 intact hives that were discovered in the ruins of Tel Rehov, located in modern-day Israel. This is evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in Canaan approximately 4,000 years ago. The 150 beehives, many broken, were made of straw and unbaked clay. They were found in orderly rows. Ezra Marcus from the University of Haifa said the discovery provided a glimpse of ancient beekeeping seen in texts and ancient art from the Near East. An altar decorated with fertility figurines was found alongside the hives and may indicate religious practices associated with beekeeping. While beekeeping predates these ruins, this is the oldest apiary yet discovered.
Honey from traditional hives was extracted by pressing – crushing the wax honeycomb to squeeze out the contents. Due to this harvesting, traditional beehives provided more beeswax, but far less honey than a modern hive.
Four styles of traditional beehives are mud hives, clay/tile hives, skeps, and bee gums.
Skeps have two disadvantages: cannot inspect the comb for diseases and pests, and honey removal is difficult and often results in the destruction of the entire colony. To get the honey beekeepers either drove the bees out of the skep or, by using a bottom extension called an eke or a top extension called a cap, sought to create a comb with only honey in it. Quite often the bees were killed, sometimes using lighted sulfur, to allow the honeycomb to be removed. Skeps could also be squeezed in a vise to extract the honey.
As of 1998, most US states prohibited the use of skeps, or any other hive that cannot be inspected for disease and parasites.
Later skep designs included a smaller woven basket (cap) on top over a small hole in the main skep. This cap acted as a crude super, allowing some honey to be extracted with less destruction of brood and bees. In England, such an extension piece consisting of a ring of about 4 or 5 coils of straw placed below a straw beehive to give extra room for brood rearing was called an eke, imp, or nadir. An eke was used to give just a bit of extra room, or to "eke" some more space, a nadir is a larger extension used when a full story was needed beneath.The apiary by Alfred Neighbour - page 186 - Fittings and Apparatus, Ekes and Nadirs.
The term is derived from Old Norse skeppa, "basket". A person who made such woven beehives was called a "skepper", a surname that still exists in Western countries. In England the thickness of the coil of straw was controlled using a ring of leather or a piece of cow's horn called a "girth" and the coils of straw could be sewn together using strips of briar. Likenesses of skeps can be found in paintings, carvings, and old manuscripts. The skep is often used on signs as an indication of industry ("the busy bee").
In the late 18th century, more complex skeps appeared with wooden tops with holes in them over which glass jars were placed. The comb would then be built into the glass jars, making the designs commercially attractive.
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, the harvest of honey from these destroyed the colony. Often the harvester would kill the bees before even opening their nest. This was done by inserting a metal container of burning sulfur into the gum.
Natural tree hollows and artificially hollowed tree trunks were widely used in the past by beekeepers in Central Europe. For example, in Poland, such a beehive was called a barć and was protected in various ways from unfavorable weather conditions (rain, frost) and predators (, , pine martens, forest dormice). Harvest of honey from these did not destroy the colony, as only a protective piece of wood was removed from the opening and smoke was used to pacify the bees for a short time. Spain still uses cork bark cylinder with cork top hives, similar to a gum or barć, colmenas de corcho.
Part of the reason why bee gums are still used is that this allows the producers of the honey to distinguish themselves from other honey producers and to ask for a higher price for the honey. An example where bee gums are still used is Mont-Lozère, France, although in Europe they are referred to as log hives. Paper on use of bee gums in France The length of these log hives used is shorter than bee gums; they are hollowed out artificially and cut to a specific size.
Intermediate stages in hive design were recorded for example by Thomas Wildman in 1768-1770, who described advances over the destructive old skep-based beekeeping so that the bees no longer had to be killed to harvest the honey.Thomas Wildman, A Treatise on the Management of Bees (London, 1768; 2nd ed. 1770). Wildman, for example, fixed a parallel array of wooden bars across the top of a straw hive or skep (with a separate straw top to be fixed on later) "so that there are in all seven bars of deal" in "to which the bees fix their combs".Wildman, op.cit., 2nd (1770) ed., at pp. 94–95. He also described using such hives in a multi-story configuration, foreshadowing the modern use of supers: he described adding (at the proper time) successive straw hives below, and eventually removing the ones above when free of brood and filled with honey so that the bees could be separately preserved at the harvest for the following season. Wildman also describedWildman, op.cit., 2nd (1770) ed., at pp. 112–15. a further development, using hives with "sliding frames" for the bees to build their comb, foreshadowing more modern uses of movable-comb hives. Wildman acknowledged the advances in knowledge of bees previously made by Jan Swammerdam, Maraldi, and de Reaumur – he included a lengthy translation of Reaumur's account of the natural history of bees – and he also described the initiatives of others in designing hives for the preservation of bee-life when taking the harvest, citing in particular reports from Brittany dating from the 1750s, due to Comte de la Bourdonnaye.
In 1814 Petro Prokopovych, the founder of commercial beekeeping in Ukraine, invented one of the first which allowed an easier honey harvest. Petro Prokopovych Beekeeping in Ukraine, accessed May 2011 20 Facts on Beekeeping in Ukraine Apimondia 2013, accessed May 2011
The correct distance between combs for easy operations in beehives was described in 1845 by Jan Dzierżon as from the center of one top bar to the center of the next one. In 1848, Dzierżon introduced grooves into the hive's side walls replacing the strips of wood for moving top bars. The grooves were , the spacing later termed bee space.
Based on the aforementioned measurements, August Adolph von Berlepsch (Bienezeitung May 1852) in Thuringia and L.L. Langstroth (October 1852) in the United States designed their own movable-frame hives. Langstroth used, however "about 1/2 inch" () above the frame's top bars and "about 3/8 inch" () between the frames and hive body.
Hives can be vertical or horizontal. There are three main types of modern hive in common use worldwide:
Most hives have been optimized for Apis mellifera and Apis cerana. Some other hives have been designed and optimized for some meliponines such as Melipona beecheii. Examples of such hives are the Nogueira-Neto hive and the UTOB hive. UTOB hive
Inside the boxes, frames are hung parallel to each other. Langstroth frames are thin rectangular structures made of wood or plastic and typically have a plastic or wax foundation on which the bees draw out the comb. The frames hold the honeycomb formed by the bees with beeswax. Eight or ten frames side by side (depending on the size of the box) will fill the hive body and leave the right amount of bee space between each frame and between the end frames and the hive body. With appropriate provision of bee space, the bees are not likely to glue parts together with propolis nor fill spaces with the dimensions now usual for top bee space are not the same as those that Langstroth described. Self-spacing beehive frames were introduced by Julius Hoffman, a student of Johann Dzierzon.The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture, Forty-First Edition, published by A.I. Root Company pg. 265 Langstroth frames can be reinforced with wire, making it possible to spin the honey out of the comb in a centrifuge. As a result, the empty frames and comb can be returned to the beehive for re-filling by the bees. Creating a honeycomb involves a significant energy investment, conservatively estimated at of honey needed to create of comb in temperate climates. Reusing comb can thus increase the productivity of a beekeeping enterprise.
The sizes of hive bodies (rectangular boxes without tops or bottoms placed one on top of another) and of internal frames vary between named styles. A variety of approximations to Langstroth hive are still used, with top bars some long or a little more. However, this class of hives includes several other styles, mostly used in Europe, which differ mainly in the size and number of frames used. These include:
The Warre hive differs from other stacked hive systems in one fundamental aspect: when the bees need more space as the colony expands, the new box is "nadired"; i.e., positioned underneath the existing box or boxes. This serves the purpose of warmth retention within the brood nest of the hive, considered vital to colony health.
This is the method and hive style used in "Slovenian Beekeeping" and is regarded to be an excellent way to make temporary and mobile pollination possible for many seasonal crops (like almonds, a truck is used with an entire 'barn' of hives is parked adjacent to the fields needing pollination) and is also an excellent way to reduce manual labor for smaller apiaries and individuals keeping bees - The safety and security of a stationary and centralized hive, reduced frame weight and the ability to work inside are the most commonly referenced perks.
In 2022, UNESCO has added the cultural relevance and record of this style of beekeeping to their Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Disadvantages include (usually) unsupported combs that cannot be spun in most , and it is not usually possible to expand the hive if additional honey storage space is required. Most horizontal hives cannot easily be lifted and carried by one person.
Because the unsupported comb built from a top bar cannot usually be centrifuged in a honey extractor, the honey is usually extracted by crushing and straining rather than centrifuging. Because the bees have to rebuild their comb after the honey is harvested, a top-bar hive yields a beeswax harvest in addition to honey. Queen excluders may or may not be used to keep the brood areas entirely separate from the honey. Even if no queen excluder is used, the bees store most of their honey separately from the areas where they are raising the brood, and honey can still be harvested without killing the bees or brood.
Variations:
In modern times, it is a key symbol in Freemasonry. In masonic lectures, it represents industry and cooperation,Shawn Eyer, "The Beehive and the Stock of Knowledge". Philalethes, The Journal of Masonic Research and Letters 63.1 (Winter 2010), 35–42. and as a metaphor cautioning against intellectual laziness, warning that "he that will so demean himself as not to be endeavoring to add to the common stock of knowledge and understanding, may be deemed a drone in the hive of nature, a useless member of society, and unworthy of our protection as Masons."Thomas Smith Webb, The Freemason's Monitor, or Illustrations of Masonry in Two Parts, 2nd ed. New York: Southwick & Crooker, 1802, 77–78.|118x118px]]
The beehive appears on the 3rd Degree emblems on the Tracing Board of Royal Cumberland No. 41, Bath and is explained as such: Ars Quatuor Coronatorum – Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, London, Volume XXXVI, page 222, W. J. Songhurst, 1923
The beehive is also used with a similar meaning by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From Latter-day Saint usage, it has become one of the State symbols of Utah ( see Deseret).
Hives erected as a crop shield against elephants are sometimes destroyed elephants. These hives are hung on a single metal wire that encircles the crop field of some farms in African elephant territory. The installation is called a beehive fence and was conceived by Lucy King.
Humans may also determine that a beehive must be destroyed in the interest of public safety or in the interest of preventing the spread of bee diseases. The U.S. state of Florida destroyed the hives of Africanized honey bees, in 1999. The state of Alaska has issued regulations governing the treatment of diseased beehives via burning followed by burial, fumigation using ethylene oxide or other approved gases, sterilization by treatment with lye, or by scorching. In New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the treatment of hives infected with the disease American foulbrood with antibiotics is prohibited, and beekeepers are required by law to destroy such colonies and hives with fire.
Ancient hives
Traditional hives
Mud hives
Clay hives
Skeps
Bee gums
Modern hives
Vertical hives
Langstroth hives
Warré hives
WBC hives
CDB hives
AZ hives
Horizontal hives
Top-bar hives
Long box hive
Symbolism
Population, relocation and destruction
Population
Relocation
Destruction
Animal destruction
Human destruction
See also
External links
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