Which beehive do I need?

Choosing the right beehive is an important step for beginning beekeepers.  Fortunately, beehives are pretty easy to understand.  In the next few paragraphs I will explain pretty much everything you need to know to select a beehive.

By far the most popular and widley used style is called the Langstroth hive.  This is the kind of beehive that you want. Especially as a beginner, this is the easiest to handle and will give you the most honey.  It is what you think of when you think of a beehive in someone's backyard.  Here are a few pictures so you can get an idea in your mind:

The beehive is very simple.  Here are complete pictures of the part of the hive:

The gist of the beehive is this:  The bees crawl into the hive through that slit in the bottom, and make honey lay eggs on the frames inside.  The top part protects them from the weather.  That's pretty much it.  When you want to get your honey out, you take off the top and there it is.

I'll go into a little more detail about setting up your hive.

More details…

The bottom

The bottom serves as a solid base for the hive.  It is important to have this on a level surface because the different parts of the hive simply sit on top of one another.  They are not hooked together.  The parts are heavy enough that they stay put pretty well.  The bottom board should be on a level and dry surface.

Beebox, or Deep Super

The beebox, or "deep super" is the main part of the hive.  I'm not really sure why its called the deep super, "beebox" makes more sense to me.  Really the beebox is nothing more than a wood box made of 4 sides and no top or bottom.  Inside the beebox hang the frames.

The frames are shaped so that their top edges rest on a slit at the top of the box, and they hang sort of loosely inside the box.  This is where the bees put the honey.  The frames are built with the honeycomb shape built-in, so the bees have it easier attaching the honey to it. 

One of the great things about setting up a hive like this is the scalability of the hive.  Let's say your hive is thriving in your current beehive and they are running out of room.  You want to give your hive more room to make more honey.  All you have to do is get another bee box and stack it on top of the first.  Often times people will stack a smaller beebox, or "medium super" on top of the first.  This is simply because honey weighs a lot, and a smaller beebox makes it easier to handle.

Inner cover and outer cover

These are for weather protection and ventilation of the hive.  Often the outer cover will be covered by tin for extra weather protection.

Where to get a beehive?

There are a few places around that sell Langstroth beehives.  You can likely pick one up locally.  Or you can have Lost Creek Bees ship you one.  Simply visit our beautiful beehives page and have a look around.