LANGSTROTH HIVES

Bees can be kept in almost any dark, dry container that offers shelter from the elements and has the size necessary for the bees, the storage of food and the production of new bees (brood).

In 1853, Rev. L.L. Langstroth published a book called the Hive and the Honeybee which changed beekeeping profoundly. This book describes the modern hive as we know it currently.

The Langstroth hive is the standard bee hive used in many parts of the world today.

I will describe the parts of the Langstroth hive in use today, I will start at the lowest level and move up.

A. The Bottom Board: The bottom board supports the hive. It has the floor of the hive with a rim around three sides to allow the bees to enter on the fourth side. It also extends a couple of inches in front to provide a landing porch for the bees. Another piece associated with the bottom board is an entrance reducer. This X piece of wood acts to reduce the hive entrance to help keep mice out and to allow a hive to more easily defend itself against robber bees and wasps. An entrance reducer also helps keep the hive warmer by reducing drafts. Some beekeepers use a screened bottom board as part of an integrated pest management (IPM) system.

B. The Hive Body: This part is essentially a box with no top or bottom. The standard 10 frame hive body can vary from supplier to supplier, but the inside measurements of 9 5/8 high, 14 11/16 across the front, and 18 5/16 long are critical. The front and back sides of the hive body have a rabbit across the top to provide a resting place for the hanging frames. One of the advantages of this kind of system is the ability to stack more hive bodies and honey supers on top, because all have the same dimensions.

C. Frames: The purpose of the frames is to hold the foundation securely inside the hive box. The foundation is the surface that the beekeeper provides for the bees to build their wax comb. The bees use the wax comb for food storage and brood production. There are different sized frames for the different depths of boxes or supers. The hive body will use a frame with end bars that are 9 1/8 long. The other supers will use frames with end bars that correspond to their height.

C. Foundation: As I stated before, the foundation is the surface that the beekeeper provides for the bees to build their comb. The size of the foundation will correspond to the size of the frames needed for the super. Foundation can be made of wax or plastic and it will be necessary to have the correct style of frames to attach either wax or plastic foundation as the attachment is different for wax and plastic foundation.

D. Queen Excluders: These are a plastic or metal grid that is placed on top of hive body with the queen in residence. The purpose of the queen excluder is

to keep the queen from moving into the honey supers and laying brood. The grid is designed to allow the workers to move easily into the honey supers, excluding the queen, because of her size. There are many beekeepers that do not use queen excluders, some of these beekeepers refer to them as honey excluders, because it is thought that even the worker bees do not like to go through the grid.

D. Honey Supers: These are the boxes with frame and foundation for the bees to store their surplus honey. They come in two basic sizes:

Shallow super 5-3/4 high super that uses 5-3/8 frames.

Medium super 6-5/8 high super that uses 6-1/4 frames.

Because a standard hive body full of food stores and brood is pretty heavy, there are some beekeepers that have chosen to use medium supers for the hive body (usually stacking two or more for the hive). They will then use either mediums, or shallows for their honey supers. As a side note, there are also supers and frames especially constructed to accommodate the bees building of comb honey, with associated packaging for the sale of honey in the comb.

E. Inner Cover: The inner cover does a couple of duties. It provides a dead air space for insulation against heat and cold. It also helps keep the bees from glueing the top cover to the top of the frames. Some beekeepers use the inner cover as a feeding platform by placing dry sugar or pollen on the cover which the bees can access through the center hole.

F. The Top Cover: This is a cover that fits over the inner cover and the adjacent hive body or honey super. Usually, the outer top will be sheathed in some kind of metal or other waterproof material to keep rain from dripping into the hive and supers. There is another type of cover that commercial beekeepers use called a migratory cover. This cover just covers the hive with no telescoping sides. This provides the ability to keep the hives against each other for stacking on pallets.

*Drawings and photos courtesy of Beesource.com