The History of hives with moveable frames

For thousands of years, bees were kept in hives cut into the trunks of trees, in straw baskets or ceramic pots. More recently, naturalists have found out how bees organise their nests. One such person was Huber, who developed an observation hive in the late eighteenth century. He was frustrated by contemporary research hives where the view became obscured by comb. So he created the “leaf” hive. He sandwiched thin sheets of wood for the bees to build their comb between sheets of glass and arranged them like pages in a book. It made inspecting the colony easy.

Huber’s leaf hive inspired Langstroph in 1851 when he combined the value of removable frames while sticking to bee space. Bee space is the distance between the edges of frames and walls and between drawn frames. Bees do not fill gaps that are these spaces apart. Utilising this information, he designed a hive in which combs could be removed for inspection while barely disturbing the colony.

For practical beekeeping purposes, Bee Space is regarded as 8 mm or 6mm, except under the lower bars of frames in the bottom brood box. Learn more about bee space.

Spaces larger than these measurements are filled with wax, whereas smaller ones are filled with propolis. However, bees don’t always agree with our definition of bee space and build comb where they shouldn’t.

The naming of parts

Newbies (inexperienced beekeepers) often mistake hives for colonies. Hives are the structures that bees live in, whereas colonies refer to the bees that live in the hives. This is so fundamental that if you get muddled up, your new beekeeping friends will temporarily forget you are a newbie and think you are an ignoramus.

Roof

In wooden hives, the roof is made of wood and covered with a metal sheet. This gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter, making poly hive owners feel rather smug.

Crown Board 

Wooden hives have a multifunctional sheet of plywood that lives under the roof when not in use. It is helpful for various tasks like ventilation, feeding, “bringing down” stores and removing bees from honey stores before harvest. This makes Beebox owners jealous.

Inner cover

Many poly hives have a transparent plastic Inner cover that, among other things, prevents the roof from sticking to the frames.

Hive bodies

I prefer the term box, although it is inappropriate, as bee boxes lack a top or bottom. So, a hive is a tube chopped into segments, and each segment is called a hive body. Wall thickness varies from 40 mm polystyrene to 19 mm wood. They usually come in two sizes: larger deep boxes, which are for brood, where the queen lays, whilst smaller ones above the brood boxes are supers (derived from the Latin for “above”). Supers are for honey. The benefits of using bee boxes rather than old beehives made of straw (skeps) are apparent. The colony had to be destroyed with skeps before the honey could be harvested.

Queen Excluder

This grill is made of metal or plastic with gaps 4.3 mm wide. Worker bees can squeeze through, but drones and queens can’t.

Floor

Floors usually have the central part cut away, which is covered with a fine wire mesh called an Open Mesh floor (OMF). When a parasitic mite called varroa gets knocked off a bee, it falls through the mesh and dies. Solid floors were used before Varroa arrived. An OMF reduces the varroa infestation by 20%.

Entrance

Wooden hives have an entrance block which controls the size of the opening. In the winter, they are fitted with a smaller entrance called a mouse excluder. Plastic hives have an adjustable plastic entrance that is typically too narrow to admit a mouse.

Nucleus Hives (Nucs)

These are small hives. They come in various sizes, holding 2 to 6 frames. Compare this with a standard hive box, which contains 8 to 12 frames depending on the hive type, for example, Nationals 10 to 11, Langstroth 8 or 10 frames, etc.

Frames and foundation

In modern hives, bees build honeycomb on the top bars or foundation. Each top bar is a stick that spans the box. Each end of the stick is called a lug. These are supported by metal or plastic strips on the walls called runners.

Frames have top bars but also side and bottom bars, like the frame around a picture. The middle of the frame is like the canvas of a picture. But rather than canvas, it is a rectangular sheet of wax or plastic called the foundation. The bees build their comb on the top bar or the foundation.

I refer to a modern hive as any hive with removable frames. I do not mean that other hives are retarded.

The default meaning for a frame is a wooden frame with a wax foundation. The default meaning of a plastic frame is one where the outer rim of a frame is fused with plastic foundation.

Honey that belongs to the bees is called frames of stores, but when we want to eat it, they become frames of honey.

Cells

Little hexagonal wax tubes are made to store food or grow baby bees. They are collectively known as comb. They store honey and pollen, raise brood (larvae and pupae) and process nectar.

A frame covered with empty comb is sometimes called “comb”.

Brace, burr, and wild comb is comb situated where it is unwelcome.

Bees “make” comb. That sounds like a perfectly adequate description. But oh no, bees draw or draw out comb despite it having no connection with making a picture or pulling someone along the ground as a form of capital punishment.

Glossary of beekeeping terminology

The parts of Paradise Honey Hives