The Parts of a Beehive

Introduction

So far i have talked about the technical details on what i am trying to achieve and how.  I thought that before i start to merge the technical with the beehive that we should take a moment to talk through the various parts of a beehive.

There are many types of beehive available to the beekeeper, when I was kindly given my first colony of bees by Peter Dight I was given a colony that was in a national hive, ever since then i have used national hives, they are very popular in the UK and are easy to work with when you open them up, they basically look like a bunch of square boxes stacked on top of each other.  

Here is one of my hives to give you an idea.

This picture was taken shortly after catching a swarm of bees that decided they wanted to join in my friends wedding festivities this year.

The Hive

National Hives are modular, they are very flexible and simple to assemble, which based on my experience seems to be why people like them.

All my hives are made from cedar, i like using cedar as it is long lasting and also resistant to lots of insect attacks, also when i am making my hives, the smell of cedar wood is lovely.

They are Typically made up of an entrance, a brood box, a queen excluder, 1 or more super's, a crown board and a roof.

All of the required parts simply stack on top of each other.

In the photo above of the small hive, there is an entrance, a brood box and a roof visible.

We'll walk through the parts that you may need to know now.

Entrance

The entrance is where all of our bees enter and leave the hive, this is where we will be mounting our bee counter, across the front of the gap that is visible in the photo above.

Frames

Frames are what goes in each of the boxes, you can normally get 12 frames in each box, there are typically 2 sizes of frames that people use, ones that fit the brood box and ones that fit the supers.

The frames are exactly that, a wooden frame that has a sheet of bees wax attached, this wax is called foundation.  

We put these into hives to give the bees something to build their honey comb against, if we just gave them empty boxes, the bees would be perfectly happy, but when it came to checking on them, or harvesting their honey it would be very difficult, as the bees would build whatever shapes they wanted to and it would be quite organic, the frames give structure that make our lives easier as beekeepers. 

Once the bees have drawn out the frames with comb (this is a fancy way of saying that they have made the little hexagonal cells that they deposit the honey into), they will then fill the cells up with the precious nectar that they collect.

Here is a picture i took a few years ago of the drawn out comb on a frame.

It still fascinates me that every cell looks identical, the cell walls are made of wax.

Brood Box

This is normally the deeper box that is located near the entrance to the hive, it is where the queen lives(and should be found).  She lays her eggs in the cells and her and her young are nursed by some of the bees within the hive.

Queen Excluder

The queen excluder is a divider that sits between the brood box and the super, it is normally metal or plastic and contains lots and lots of holes.

It is designed so that the holes are big enough for the worker bees to fit through, but small enough that the queen can't get through into the upper parts of the hive.  We don't really want the queen laying eggs, or have young larvae creating waste and detritus in the supers, we want to keep the honey in the supers clean(for us to steal).

Super

This is where the bees deposit nice clean honey for their reserves, so that they have plenty of food in stock.  This is the honey that we collect as rent for letting the bees live in our hives...

Back to the Sensors.

Most of our sensors will be concentrated around the bottom sections of the hive, specifically the entrance and the brood box.  With the scales sitting under the entrance section, the bee counter being attached to the entrance and the internal temperature and humidity sensor being mounted on the inside wall of the brood box.  We may add additional sensors as we make this journey, as of today though they are the planned sensors and mounting locations.