The Beekeeping Hive

Beekeeping or apiculture is the practice of keeping bees for the production of honey either as a hobby or an all out commercial venture - and rewarding it is. A good number of commercial beekeepers can tell you about six or seven figure incomes that come from beekeeping so it's not a fallacy that it is actually lucrative. But still, there are other folks like the scientists and researchers who will keep bees for other purposes like research.

Since bees have an innate nature to exist as a unit or colony, they have tagged together since the beginning of time in the natural habitats of forests. They gathered in colonies and lived on treetops and hollow tree trunks. Man has sought to domesticate the bees for quite a long while with a very commendable degree of success that has featured breakthroughs such as the invention of hives. A hive is a structure, mostly made of wood and sometimes other materials, designed to mimic the natural habitat of the bees (the hollow tree trunks).

Beehives have been quite a breakthrough in especially the commercial beekeeping sector. Modern designs have done a lot to substantially increase the efficiency and outputs for beekeepers and as I write this, there already a couple of patents for some particular designs. Note that I'm referring to man-made or artificial beehives here. See, in the late 1700s, the bees had to be killed during the harvest which usually involved total destruction of the hive. So the invention of the modern beehive alone changed a lot about beekeeping.

The internal structure of any beehive is basically made up of interconnected hexagonal cell-like structures that bees use to store honey and pollen and also to reproduce. They use wax (beeswax) to construct these structures which are referred to as honeycombs. This means the more the honeycombs present in the beehives, the more the amount of honey that can be harvested at any one go. 

There are several types of artificial beehives present in the market, but, you may also construct one for yourself if you have the know-how. Whichever type you settle on, ensure that it is easily maneuverable and can be maintained and accessed in the most efficient of ways to prevent damage and save you some time and effort.

Even as you try to understand the physical nature of the beehive, it is also beneficial to know a little bit about what goes on in there - the bee nature. There are three types of bees; the worker bees, the drones and the queen bee. There is only one queen in a hive at any given time though the colony might develop another upon her demise. 

The queen's role is primarily to lay eggs and being the most important member of the hive, you shouldn't interfere with her a lot. The drones on the other hand are only required for mating with the queen. They are kicked out soon after and they hardly stick to one colony. The worker bees are the most abundant types of bees and as their name suggests, they do all of the 'housekeeping' in the hive. They also protect the hive from intruders.