Inside a Bee Hive -Insect studies Merit Badge - Scout Eric Adventures
Channel: Scout Eric Adventures
Date: 10/08/2021

Scout Eric investigates Bee Hives with the help of friends.  See what we learn as we break the Hive down?  What do we find?  Why is Bee keeping so important?  These are some of the question we will explore.

Multiple Merit Badges explore Bee's.  Insect Merit badge is the one we"ll be working on in this video.  Please watch the entire video as it has some great information that I think you'll find interesting.   

LANGSTROTH HIVE:
The Langstroth hive (pictured below) is the most common style in use today and a favorite for new beekeepers. The design was patented by Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth in the mid-19th century and features removable frames that the bees build comb in. Langstroth hives consist of boxes that stack on top of each other. 

Parts of a Langstroth Hive

Outer/Telescoping Cover — Keeps the whole hive dry from rain. Similar to a roof on a house.
Inner Cover — The inner cover fits between the top hive box and the outer cover. It provides insulation and prevents frames from sticking to the outer cover. It can be used with a bee escape when harvesting honey.
Shallow/Honey Super — Shallow supers are most the commonly used size for honey production. 
Queen Excluder — Allows only worker bees to pass through, keeping the queen and drones away from the honey. This is an optional piece of equipment that prevents the queen from laying eggs in the honey collection supers. Not every beekeeper uses an excluder.  
Frames — Removable frames (wooden or plastic) fit into the hive boxes. Frames come in different sizes to fit the three different sizes of supers. Bees build honeycomb inside the wooden frames (often using beeswax foundation/plastic foundation as a guide.) The comb cells hold young bees, pollen, nectar, and honey.
Foundation — Most beekeepers use sheets of beeswax (or plastic) foundation as a guide inside the frames. This helps to encourage the bees to build straight comb inside the frames.
Brood Chamber (Also called: deep super or brood box) — The brood box contains larger frames than the shallow super. Here, the queen lays eggs for the next generation of bees. In this maternity ward, nurse bees care for the young.
Bottom Board — The base of the hive. Bottom boards are available as a solid bottom or with a screened bottom. 
A Langstroth hive can contain any combination of the three sizes of super boxes: deeps/brood, mediums, or shallows.   

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. Nest is used to discuss colonies that house themselves in natural or artificial cavities or are hanging and exposed. Hive is used to describe an artificial/man-made structure to house a honey bee nest. Several species of Apis live in colonies, but for honey production the western honey bee (Apis mellifera) and the eastern honey bee (Apis cerana) are the main species kept in hives.

The nest's internal structure is a densely packed group of hexagonal prismatic cells made of beeswax, called a honeycomb. The bees use the cells to store food (honey and pollen) and to house the brood (eggs, larvae, and pupae).

Beehives serve several purposes: production of honey, pollination of nearby crops, housing supply bees for apitherapy treatment, and to try to mitigate the effects of colony collapse disorder. In America, hives are commonly transported so that bees can pollinate crops in other areas. A number of patents have been issued for beehive designs

Honey bees use caves, rock cavities and hollow trees as natural nesting sites. In warmer climates they may occasionally build exposed hanging nests. Members of other subgenera have exposed aerial combs. The nest is composed of multiple honeycombs, parallel to each other, with a relatively uniform bee space. It usually has a single entrance. Western honey bees prefer nest cavities approximately 45 litres in volume and avoid those smaller than 10 or larger than 100 litres Western honey bees show several nest-site preferences: the height above ground is usually between 1 metre (3.3 ft) and 5 metres (16 ft), entrance positions tend to face downward, equatorial-facing entrances are favored, and nest sites over 300 metres (980 ft) from the parent colony are preferred. Bees usually occupy nests for several years.

The bees often smooth the bark surrounding the nest entrance, and coat the cavity walls with a thin layer of hardened plant resin called propolis. Honeycombs are attached to the walls along the cavity tops and sides, but small passageways are left along the comb edges. The basic nest architecture for all honeybees is similar: honey is stored in the upper part of the comb; beneath it are rows of pollen-storage cells, worker-brood cells, and drone-brood cells, in that order. The peanut-shaped queen cells are normally built at the lower edge of the comb.