Beekeeping

The Backyard Beekeeper: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Keeping Bees in Your Yard and Garden

There are considerable regional variations in the type of hive in which bees are kept. A hive is a set of rectangular wooden boxes filled with moveable wood or plastic frames, each of which holds a sheet of wax or plastic foundation. The bees build cells upon the sheets of foundation to create complete honeycombs. Foundation comes in two cell-sizes: worker foundation - which enables the bees to create small, hexagonal worker cells and 'drone foundation' which allows the bees to build much larger cells - drone cells, for the production of male bees.

The bottom box, or brood chamber, contains the queen and most of the bees; the upper boxes, or supers, contain just honey. Only the young nurse bees can produce wax flakes which they secrete from between their abdominal plates; they build honeycomb using the artificial wax foundation as a starting point, after which they may raise brood or deposit honey and pollen in the cells of the comb. These frames can be freely manipulated and honey supers with frames full of honey can be taken and extracted for their honey crop.