The hive that is used to house the Honey Bee is a simple structure. It consists of a box without top or bottom and removable frames that sit inside the box. The Queen Bee lays her eggs, the Worker Bees feed the pupae, store the nectar to make honey, and store the incoming pollen for food on the frames in honeycomb. The frames are simply a s heet of wax with the profile of the honey comb embossed into it. This is called FOUNDATION.



The image above shows the frame and foundation just before they are put together.   You can see the assembled frame and foundation in the image below.



Foundation gives the worker bees a template upon which they can quickly and neatly build the comb into which the Queen can lay her eggs. Foundation was developed by beekeepers to help the bees make neat comb.

The bees don't actually need foundation but it helps them to make comb that can be managed by the beekeeper. In a wild hive, in a tree for instance, the bees would make comb that would be built wherever they felt it should be and in order to harvest the honey the combs would have to be destroyed. This is how it was done for hundreds and hundreds of years. But, now with frames and hives the beekeeper can manage the colony, harvest the honey and feed and medicate the bees without destroying the combs. This saves the bees and the beekeeper an incredible amount of work.

Each side of a sheet of foundation will hold about 3,500 cells. That means that on one frame, front and back there can be as many as 7,000 eggs or pupae growing. It's easy to see how a hive can contain 60,000 or more bees in it during the summer months. Do the math… how many eggs could be laid on 10 frames of foundation?

A beekeeper usually builds his hives from a kit. In the picture below you see how it comes before it's assembled . . .



looks like a pile of sticks doesn't it?

Each of those pieces is carefully cut so that the beekeeper can glue and nail it together to make the FRAME that holds the foundation. These frames then drop into the box with no top or bottom.

The next two pictures show how the brood box is assembled. This is the box that holds the frames and gives the hive its distinctive appearance.






These are called HIVE BODIES or SUPERS. You can see in the photo below how the frames are lined up in the hive body. There are usually 10 frames per hive body but some beekeepers use 9 frames instead.



You might have noticed that the Supers are painted different colors. The bees don't really have a preference what color their houses are painted. The paint helps to seal the wood from damage by rain and sun. Light colors are generally used rather than dark colors because lighter colors, especially white, reflects the suns heat keeping the bees cooler inside during the summer months. We chose different light colors just because we like the variety. White is fine but pretty boring.

Many scientists suggest that bees recognize their own hives based no so much on color but on patterns… that's why we used several different colors and stack them in a way that makes us smile.



Most Beekeepers spend the cold winter months building and painting new hives. All the pieces of the hive made from wood are called WOODENWARE. Every winter day spent building new hives is a day spent daydreaming about spring, flowers and honey. Yum!