Inside a Bee Apartment Complex

Beehives have many boxes stacked on top of one another in a “tower-like structure”; these boxes are called “supers”.  Inside the “supers” are “ten rectangular frames [that] hang side by side”.  The frames provide “a foundation on which the bees can build their wax honeycomb”.  The bees create hexagon shaped “cells” that will be used to “store food and raise [their] young”.  The “supers” and frames mimic, structure-wise, what a hive would be like in the wild (Burns, 2010, p. 2).  “Each hive consists of an outer cover, an inner cover, two honey supers, a queen excluder, and a brood nest”.  A typical hive has two large supers, or four medium supers for the brood nest, and one large, or two medium supers for the rest of the hive (p. 3).  It is customary to start inspection “at the top of the hive and … [work downward]”.  The “queen excluder” is a metal screen that prevents the queen from leaving and swarming.  She cannot fit through the metal screen because her body is too large for the opening.  The workers on the other hand fit through the screen with ease.  The brood nest is where the “colony’s young and developing bees” are; they are referred to as brood.