What is a bee's nest?
A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus Apis live and raise their young. Though the word beehive is commonly used to describe the nest of any bee colony, scientific and professional literature distinguishes nest from hive.
Ground Nesters
Over 70% of bees build their nests by digging in the ground, making soil the most common material used by bees for nesting. Each species has a preferred soil texture.
Some nest underground, in places such as abandoned rodent holes, under sheds and in compost heaps. Of those that nest above ground, some make nests in thick grass, while others make nests in bird boxes, lofts and in trees.
A honey bee colony typically consists of three kinds of adult bees: workers, drones, and a queen.
Honey bees tended by beekeepers live in wood boxes called hives (See Activity Sheet 5). Some well-managed hives in bee yards contain up to 80,000 individual bees. The central structure of the colony is the wax comb. It is made up of six-sided, white wax chambers or cells.
Nests are important for native bee reproduction because they provide a safe environment for offspring to live. Each nest cell gets provisioned with pollen that bee larvae eat as they grow and mature. By helping farmers create and protect nest sites, Bee Better is able to help foster the next generation of bees.
Worker bees manufacture the only necessary nest material – beeswax. The beeswax is molded into parallel beeswax sheets termed combs. Most of the comb consists of worker cells. The cells are six-sided (hexagonal) and have a three-part bottom pyramid shape.
Hive is a structure for housing a swarm of honeybees while apiary is a place where bees and their hives are kept.
Wild honey bees make hives in rock crevices, hollow trees and other areas that scout bees believe are appropriate for their colony. Similar to the habits of domesticated honey bees, they construct hives by chewing wax until it becomes soft, then bonding large quantities of wax into the cells of a honeycomb.
beehive or nest in a honeycomb, a double layer of uniform hexagonal cells constructed of beeswax (secreted by the worker bees) and propolis (a plant resin collected by the workers). Honeycomb is used in winter as food for the larvae and other members of the colony. It is commonly sold…