Facts About Beehives

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Honey Bee Hives

A beehive is where some species of honey bees reside and create and raise their young. The typical beehive contains one queen bee, thousands of female worker bees and hundreds of male bees called drones. It is important here to note the distinction between a colony and a beehive. A colony is a group of bees. A beehive, or “hive,”  is the structure within which a colony resides.

Honey bee hives come in many different kinds, however, most have a waxy appearance and a honeycomb shape. They also have characteristic tiny openings where bees live. In most hives, honey is stored in the upper portion of the comb while pollen is stored in the lower part of the chamber.

The queen rules the hive and is the essential driver of all life in the hive: she is the only member with reproductive capabilities and workers attend to her every need like feeding and grooming so that she can produce as many new colony members as possible. Worker bees build the nest, find food for the whole colony and take care of the grub bees. Honey bee hives can contain up to 50,000 colony members.

How Do Honey Bees Make Hives?

Honey bees build hexagonal cells from wax. Nests are made of hundreds of these six-sided cells packed together. Some of these wax cells will be used by the queen to lay her eggs. Other cells will be used by the colony to store honey. Honey bees make hives by chewing wax until it becomes soft. Then they take the wax and make it into the cells of the honeycomb.

Why Do Honey Bees Build Hives?

Worker honey bees build hives in order to store the honey that they produce. In the winter, honey bees will seal themselves into their hives and subsist solely off the honey they have stored. 

Where Do Honey Bees Build Hives?

There are two major kinds of honey bee hives: wild honey bee hives and cultivated or domesticated honey bee hives. In the wild, honey bees build their hives in-between rocks, hollow trees and any other suitable area that they find appropriately protective. 

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