Langstroth hive

The outer cover is a wooden or polystyrene cover that fits on the top of the hive. In higher latitudes, a cover that telescopes down around the inner cover and an inch or so down over the top super, called a telescoping cover, is usually used. Many commercial beekeepers use what is known as a migratory cover, a solid cover that does not extend beyond the sides of a hive body.[10]

The inner cover provides a barrier between the telescoping cover and the bees. In more temperate climates, a plastic foil may be used as an inner cover. Plastic foil should not be used to winter bees under, as trapped condensation could cause the hive to become wet, and bees can be lost due to freezing when temperatures fall during the night. In areas with a hot summer, a solid inner cover with a communication hole provides dead-air space for insulation against both heat and cold. This prevents the bees from gluing the top cover to the top bars of the super under it. When an inner cover is used, the top cover is more easily removed from the hive. Notches in the frame of the solid inner cover and telescoping cover can serve as an upper entrance for the bees. A communication hole in the middle allows bees to reach emergency food placed above by the beekeeper if it becomes required.

Hive bodies and hive supers are rectangular boxes with standardized inside dimensions to take standardized frames, but regional and brand differences exist.[11] Outside box dimensions vary depending on the type of material used; for example, polystyrene foam boxes have much larger outside dimensions than boxes made out of wood.

Three heights of boxes are standard—deep, medium, and shallow. Deep and medium hive bodies are used for the brood chamber. Medium and shallow supers are used for honey stores. The frames holding combs have top bars that hang on rabbeted slots or rails along the upper sides of a box.

The deep hive body is normally used only for brood. If it becomes filled with honey, it becomes too heavy to handle manually. Shallow supers are not ideal for the brood chamber of the hive because the bees need to form a single compact sphere during the cold winter months—a sphere that can expand and contract without being divided by a horizontal plane in the middle caused by the gaps between combs in multiple hive bodies. Commercial operations usually use one or two deep hive bodies for brood, and additional shallow boxes for honey supers. Some hobbyists prefer to standardise on two "medium" boxes. Also, a continental deep hive body called "jumbo" allows for Dadant-sized big brood frames.

The hive body or hive super holds 8 to 10 frames that are standardized in length. The frames hold the foundation and the honeycomb that is built on it.

Hive equipment manufacturers often produce bodies and supers that vary slightly. The differences between manufacturers are generally 1⁄8 of an inch (3 mm) or less. The following table includes interior dimensions and volumes for the 5-, 8-, and 10-frame shallow, medium, and deep bodies/supers.[12][13]

A beekeeper inspecting a frame

Movable frames hold bee combs, the furniture of a hive. They enable a great deal of hive management; inspection and harvest become both easier and less destructive of bees and beekeepers. In winter, bees sometimes can become so cold they are unable to move to the other side of a hive, so beekeepers often prepare hives for winter by moving all the honey together. Movable standard frames also permit transfer of combs of honey, pollen, or brood from a healthy hive to a failing hive. This practice is a mode of transfer of pests and diseases more effectively, that has haunted modern beekeeping since its introduction. Brood transfer even lets workers replace a dead queen by feeding royal jelly to the new brood.

Langstroth frames are usually oriented "the cold way", by permitting a draft from the entrance to move through the brood chamber, but this provides more direct paths from the entrance to the combs. In his book, Langstroth said that he chose this orientation by observing bees' preferences when building comb in box hives.

Modern beekeepers buy three sizes of standardized Langstroth frames to fit the three depths of standardized Langstroth supers. Frames are inexpensively mass-produced. Most beekeepers find making frames themselves to be uneconomical. The woodwork is too intricate and repetitive without specialized tooling.

Since the frame might touch both honey and bees, frames are usually made from inexpensive, nontoxic softwoods such as eastern pine. Plastic frames are also available.

When new frames are installed, they are filled with "foundation", artificial comb made of recycled natural beeswax or plastic. Beeswax foundation usually requires support from metal wires threaded through a frame. Foundation is widely used because bees make wax from carbohydrates that would otherwise be used to make honey. Some references[14] say that as much as 7 lb (3.2 kg) of honey are sacrificed for 1 lb (0.45 kg) of wax.

The use of recycled beeswax concerns beekeepers because it can transmit diseases, such as American foulbrood. Some beekeepers, such as Christy Hemenway,[15] have said that they believe that insecticides can be concentrated in the recycled wax, harming bees' health.

The frames in the Langstroth patent were not designed to use foundation. The top bars of the patent Langstroth frames were "comb guides", 60° triangular prisms of wood pointing downwards. These encourage the bees to construct new comb along the edge of the prism, within the frames. Some beekeepers today practice foundationless beekeeping.[16]

The bottom board is almost always exterior-grade plywood, to resist water damage. It keeps dampness and some pests out of the lower brood chamber. It rests on wooden rails, which in turn rest on the ground. Some beekeepers place the rails on bricks or sand to reduce water and termite damage. Langstroth's patent shows a wooden hive stool that lifts the hive several feet from the ground to a convenient working height for a beekeeper. A white plastic sheet is sometimes coated with a slightly sticky substance, and slid over the bottom board to trap and count fallen varroa mites, a bee parasite that can infest hives.

The entrance reducer is a square bar of wood to help the bees manage air circulation. Bees naturally manage their hive's temperature with fanning, clustering, and shivering. The reducer helps bees stay warm in winter, and fan less energetically in summer. It may drop into notches in the wooden rails or the bottom board. It has two different sizes of bee entrance notches cut into it, on different sides of the bar. In winter, the reducer is turned so that the smallest notch forms the entrance. This reduces the air flow and helps the bees to keep the hive warm. In spring and fall, it is turned so that the larger notch forms the entrance. In hot weather or full nectar season, the entire reducer can be removed to help cool the hive and permit more traffic to the fields.

In winter when the bees are too slow-moving to defend the hive, the entrance reducer may be supplemented with a mouse barrier to keep mice out of the hive.

Modern hives usually extend the bottom board slightly beyond the entrance to form a landing area, so that in nectar season, larger numbers of bees can land and walk into the hive. Langstroth's patent supplemented this with a cloth landing area supported on two wooden arms.

In Langstroth's patent, although the hive as a whole was level, the bottom board was slightly tilted toward the entrance so that liquid water would run out of the hive. The tilt also helped the bees to push dirt, debris, and dead bees out of the hive entrance. Modern commercial hives usually have level bottom boards.

Langstroth's patent entrance included two traps designed to attract wax moths away from the bee entry. These were loosely mounted so that a beekeeper could remove and destroy wax moth larvae and pupae.

The Cloake board, also known as the "bottom-without-a-bottom", is a specialty piece of hive equipment that is installed between two hive bodies of the brood nest. It allows the beekeeper to insert a sliding metal or wood panel, which will split the hive into two parts, without having to lift the hive boxes, the objective being to split a single hive into two independent hives.

The queen excluder is a mesh grid, usually made of wire or plastic, sized such that worker bees can pass through, but queens (generally) cannot. When used, it is generally placed between the hive body and the honey supers. The purpose of the queen excluder is to keep the queen from laying eggs in the honey supers, which can lead to darker honey and can also complicate extraction. Many beekeepers reject the use of queen excluders, however, claiming that they create a barrier for workers and result in lower levels of honey collection and storage.

A feeder is most often used to feed granulated sugar or sugar syrup at times of the year when natural nectar sources are not enough for the hive's needs. Various styles are used. Division board feeders have a shape similar to that of the frame, and hang inside the hive body in the same manner as a frame. Entrance feeders are wedged into the hive entrance on the bottom board with an inverted container of feed. Hive-top feeders have the same footprint as the hive body and are placed on top of the hive, but underneath the telescoping cover. Other hive-top feeders consist of an inverted container with small holes in the lid, which are placed either directly on top of the frames, or on top of the hole in the inner cover.

When harvesting honey or maintaining the supers, an "escape board" or (British) "clearing board" is placed between the brood boxes and the supers to get most of the bees out of the supers. The escape board lets bees exit the supers into other areas of the hive, but makes it difficult for the bees to re-enter the supers. They are made in many different designs.