This section is from the book "Bees For Pleasure And Profit", by Samson G. Gordon. Also available from Amazon: Bees for pleasure and profit; a guide to the manipulation of bees, the production of honey, and the general management of the apiary..
The house or home of honeybees is the beehive. In their native state bees make their home in hollow trees, in rock cavities, in the walls of old buildings, or some similar place. Primitive efforts to control the housing of bees, in order that the honey might be easily secured when the owner was ready to take off the crop, resulted in some very quaint and clumsy types of beehives. Among these was the old-fashioned skep, or straw hive, still a familiar sight in parts of Europe. This type of hive is yet today accepted as a symbol or emblem to typify thrift and industry, traits which are characteristic of honeybees.
The Parts of a Beehive.
The modern beehive, as well as all the tools and implements of the industry, are finished products-complete in every detail and so arranged that every piece and part performs its proper function not only in the right way but in the way which the bees themselves approve!
The modern standard beehive consists of several parts. There is the main part called the brood-chamber, in which the bees spend most of their time and raise their young; above this is the super or upper chamber in which they store surplus honey. Beneath the brood-chamber is a bottom-board or floor, having at the front an entrance way into the hive; and beneath this is a hive-stand combined with an alighting-board. The top of the hive is made up of an inside wooden cover and an outside cover, either wood or metal, although with the wooden cover an inside cover is not needed. So much for the general features of the honeybee's house. Now, let us investigate the furnishings of an up-to-date beehive.
A modern bee hive
The standard beehive is ordinarily equipped with ten movable frames in the brood-chamber to hold the combs, but with sufficient space between to provide free passage for the bees, even when the frames are filled with comb. These frames are filled with honeycomb by the bees; and the cells, of which there are several thousand to each comb, are utilized for stores for immediate consumption, for the deposit of eggs by the queen, and resting places for the worker bees, tired after long flights.
The super or upper chamber is likewise supplied with frames, but these may differ in size from the brood frames, as the frames in the brood chamber are named. Depending upon the desire of the beekeeper to run his apiary for comb or extracted honey (the difference between which is explained in the ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture), the frames in the super consist of little square section boxes for producing comb honey, or of long shallow frames which are part of the permanent equipment of the hive, for producing extracted honey. These combs may be cut out for chunk honey or the honey may be extracted by means of a "centrifugal honey extractor. Where comb honey is desired the super of the standard hive is furnished with 28 section boxes or diminutive frames. For extracted honey ten frames of proper dimensions are substituted. In the primitive days bee hives were not equipped with movable frames nor was there any distinction between the lower hive, or brood chamber, and the super, or storeroom. The introduction of these improvements came about as beekeepers began to seek easier ways of handling their bees and methods which would enable them to confine, to a considerable extent, laying of eggs and rearing of the baby bees in one department of the hive, while the other would be reserved for the stored-up honey in capped or sealed cells.
Shallow frames that have been filled with honey and capped over.
Having become acquainted with the honeybee family and the chief duties of its members and having studied the architecture of the honeybee's house and learned the importance of its varied furnishings, let us now consider briefly the behavior or routine life of the bees in order that we may learn the sources from which they derive food for themselves and the methods they employ in gathering honey, keeping the colony at its full working strength, and other wonderful and exceedingly interesting phases of their life. What do bees eat and where do they find food? How do bees make honey?
 
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