26 Mar Beekeeping Basics 5 – Hive Configuration & Inspections

Equipment Preparation

Once you’ve decided what kind of hive you wish to use for keeping bees, you now need to paint it.  I recommend painting each hive body to protect the wood from weather damage.  A painted beehive will last much longer than one left unprotected.  As you know, everything costs money, and I consider each box an investment.  So, a good coat of paint will go a long way toward protecting your investments as you expand your bee yard.  You do not need to use special paint on your bee boxes.  I have found that regular exterior paint works just fine on the outer surface of boxes.  When painting your hive bodies, make sure to leave the inside unpainted.  Besides the initial vapors that off gas from paint, internally painting you hive body or lid creates a moisture barrier that can increase the humidity inside the hive, which can be problematic for mildew and mold.

Hive Location

Honey bees are capable of adapting to almost any climate on Earth.  Aside from the polar ice capped regions, oceans, and the Sahara Desert, honey bees are capable of surviving everywhere on Earth.  With that in mind, there are a few things that a beekeeper can do to help their honey bees to be as productive as possible at their location. 

“There’s a saying in the real estate industry, “location, location, location”. 

Honey bees are most productive when their box is in full sun for most of the day.  In northern regions that experience long winters, hives placed for maximum sun potential will do best.  In southern regions that experience numerous summer days with temperatures over 100°F, hives placed where they can receive some afternoon shade will spend less time cooling the brood.  Cooling the hive is done through air circulation and water.  All honey bees require access to fresh water, especially in hot environments.  In the summer months, keeping the hive cool is a fulltime job for honey bees, and a large colony of bees can use as much as a gallon of water per day.  In hot and dry environments, colony survival depends on access to fresh water.  

Hive Stand

Once a location has been determined suitable for a beehive, you will need a hive stand, an important part of beekeeper success.  A hive stand too low to the ground can leave the colony vulnerable to skunks, and can leave the beekeeper with a sore back bending over to inspect and tend to the hive.  Staying comfortable while working will make for a more enjoyable beekeeping experience.  So, I suggest making sure that your hives are at least high enough off the ground to prevent the beekeeper from bending over or slouching while doing hive inspections.  To prevent skunks from visiting, hives need to be 16-18 inches off the ground.  Skunks are notorious for depleting the population of vulnerable hives.  By scratching the entrance of the hive, skunks are able to feast on the bees that come out to guard.  Over the course of a few nights, this activity can take its toll on an otherwise healthy and productive hive.  I simply use 4 cinder blocks and 2 pressure treated 4x4s as an economical hive stand.

Hive Orientation

Many beekeeping classes will teach beekeepers to orient their hives to the east so that the bees can begin working as soon as the sun comes up.  This is a perfect example of putting a human perspective onto the honey bee.  The fact is, honey bees need no special wakeup call to begin working in the morning.  Honey bees are very sensitive to light and they can detect the sunlight as soon as it begins to crest the horizon. 

Believe it or not, honey bees deposit iron in special cells located in their abdomen.  This iron deposit acts like a compass for the bee, and allows the bee to always know which way is north, east, south or west when inside a dark hive.  Sometimes a colony will not like the orientation of their hive and they will continuously build cross-combs that connect to other frames.  This can be problematic for beekeepers if honey is stored in the cross-comb, as it can cause honey to flood into the brood chamber during hive inspections.  I suspect hives that display this behavior may have strong use of their magnetoreception created by these iron deposits.  So, if you have a problem with hives that connect their comb, you may try orienting the entrance to the south to aid this alignment based on magnetoreception driving north-south comb construction.  If at all possible, avoid orienting hives opening to the north, as research shows north-facing hives are not as productive as those facing any other direction.

Hive Configuration

Working Your Hive

How To Find The Queen

There is a relatively easy way to find the Queen among 40,000-60,000 Worker bees.  She is usually going to be in a predictable location – the brood nest.  Every time I think about this topic, I am reminded of a scene from Patch Adams that sums up this seemly simple but difficult problem.  See link below.

“You’re focusing on the problem.  If you focus on the problem, you can’t see the solution.  Never focus on the problem!” 

Our problem is finding the Queen.  However, that is like finding a needle in a haystack.  My point here is this: if you are focusing on the “problem” you will only see the problem.  For a beekeeper, looking for the Queen among 40,000-60,000 bees IS a problem.  In this situation your eyes will only see Worker bees.  To be successful at finding the Queen, you have to train your eyes to focus on the “solution” and that’s finding the only bee in the colony that looks different from all other bees.  Humans are incredibly good at pattern patching, and training your eye to look for the flaw in the pattern will help you quickly find the 1 that is different than all the rest – the Queen.

This is where your knowledge of honey bee biology also becomes valuable.  As you learned in Beekeeping Basics 4 – Bee Biology, honey bee eggs hatch after 3 days.  When you zoom your eyes past the Worker bees you will see what is in each cell.  We know that the Queen’s job is to lay 2,000-3,000 eggs per day in the brood nest.  So, to find the Queen, the beekeeper needs to inspect the brood nest.  Once you find cells that contain eggs, you can be assured that the Queen must have been there within the past 3 days.

Now, zoom out and look at the bees, but don’t look at individual bees.  You have to take the picture in as a whole and look for the bee that looks different.  Carefully scan the frame back-and-forth, up-and-down, and on both sides.  If you don’t find her, move on to the next frame and repeat this method.  I’ll admit, this takes practice, and once you find the queen you’ll have a search image that will make it easier next time.  Practice this every time you do a hive inspection.  It’s okay if you don’t find her, but I recommend trying to if time allows you to do so.  If you don’t find her, but you see eggs, then you know she is there and the bees could raise a new Queen if they need to.  Keep practicing this!!!

Works Cited

Eva Crane. (1983) On the scientific front. Bee World 64:4, pages 174-175.

Hsu C-Y, Chan Y-P (2011) Identification and Localization of Proteins Associated with Biomineralization in the Iron Deposition Vesicles of Honey bees (Apis mellifera). PLoS ONE 6(4): e19088. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019088

Seeley, T.D., Morse, R.A. The nest of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.). Ins. Soc 23, 495–512 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02223477