What is The beehive or hive and How it is composed ?

Wild bees build nests in trees, logs, hedges, cliffs or walls. Removing their honey destroys their nest.

Over the centuries, people have designed reusable nests – ‘hives’ – that enable harvesting of honey without bothering the bees too much.

Worker bees fill the hive with vertical, double-sided sheets of wax honeycomb. Each side consists of hexagonal cells, most of which are 5–7mm/1.5–¼in across. 

These receive worker eggs and store the colony’s food: honey, pollen and bee bread, a mixture of pollen, nectar, saliva and microorganisms. Slightly larger cells receive drone eggs, and very large, thimble-shaped ones receive queen eggs.

Many beekeepers supply honeycomb starter sheets so that bees don’t need to make so much wax and, as a result, have more energy to make honey. These sheets encourage workers to build relatively few drone cells, whereas honeycomb built entirely by bees has more drone cells. This triggers the queen to lay more drone eggs, and it’s said that having more drones makes a colony happier.

Honey is the bees’ main source of carbohydrate, pollen their main source of protein. But both contain many other vital nutrients