Honeybee Hives for the 5-14 Curriculum

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In nature our Honeybees live in cavities such as holes in walls, old chimneys but more commonly old tree trunks. The latter would be their prefered nesting site, protected from the elelmets and predators by the security of a hole high up in some old partially rotten or dead tree, living in a space big enough to accommodate the 40 - 60 thousand bees that make up a normal sized colony.

It would be true to say that over the last few hundred years man has endeavoured to remove the large mature trees that once covered our land for one reason or another: to make way for farming; to build a navy; to fuel a war effort; to build houses factories and other structures. And along with the old woods went the diverse and complex ecosystems they supported. Few of the large ancient woodlands remain, less than 2%. What really mature trees we have now are in short supply, and quite often those that do provide suitable nesting sites, such as dead elms, are removed because they are unsightly or deemed unsafe to the public.

Beekeepers for the time being provide a useful service to Honeybees in maintaining populations and providing suitable accommodations albeit artificially. Traditional hives were called 'Skeps', a dome shaped bottomless structure made from straw. The principal involved at harvest was to remove all the bees by suffocation over a burning sulphur pit, and then cut out the useful honeycomb. This was an altogether very wasteful and destructive method of producing honey. Thankfully from the turn of the 17th century 'Removable Frame Hives' were being developed heralding a more symbiotic if not sympathetic relationship between man and bee.

Over the decades wooden removable frame hives were developed in various areas around the world. Today the most common of these are:

• Langstroth 1853 c. First removable frame hive with 'bee space', commonly used worldwide.
• WBC ( William Broughton Carr) 1890 c. Probably best known hive shape, became very popular due to ease of obtaining construction materials.
• Dadant hive 1917 c. Very similar to Langstroth.
• Smith Hive 1928 c. Invented by Mr W. Smith of Innerleithen Scotland, to be used essentially on heather. Common in Scotland .
• National 1946 c. Most commonly used hive in UK

Beekeepers are great innovators continually inventing new and diverse developments of beekeepeing practices and equipment and it will be no surprise that their are polystyrene hives available which offer an alternative to the normal red wood construction.

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