Super (Honey Super)
These are where the extraction frames are stored, the bees store their honey, us humans remove these frames and spin for OURSELVES.
Queen Excluder
The idea behind a queen excluder is that the worker bees can easily pass through the wire mesh, and the queens cannot.
They also exclude the drones.
We place excluders above the brood box to keep the queen from laying eggs in the honey supers.
Hive Body
The beehive body or hive body provides the honey bees a place for the queen to lay eggs and storage area for pollen and honey to be consumed by the honey bees for themselves
Bottom Board
A bottom board provides an entrance to the beehive that is easily reduced or closed.
It also seals up the bottom of the hive from larger predators such as mice.
Hive Frame
A hive frame or honey frame is a structural element in a beehive that holds the honeycomb or brood comb within the hive enclosure or box.
The hive frame is a key part of the modern movable-comb hive.
It can be removed in order to inspect the bees for disease or to extract the excess honey.
These are inserted into a Super for our extraction or Into the Hive body for inspection.
The Hive and its staff
A honey bee colony typically consists of three kinds of adult bees.
Workers
Several thousand worker bees cooperate in nest building, food collection, and brood rearing.
Each member has a definite task to perform, related to its adult age.
Queen
A hive contains just one queen bee.
Drones
Drones only have a limited life expectancy.
Queen Bee
The queen is the only fertile female in the colony. It is the only member that is able to lay fertilised eggs. The queen bee continually emits pheromones, a bee perfume that only the bees in the hive can smell. These pheromones keep the female workers sterile and also act as a signal to assure all the bees in the colony that the queen is alive and all is well in the hive. It is believed that this unique scent provides the colony a sense of identity and personality. The queen mates early in life, stores up millions of sperm within her body, and fertilises her eggs as and when needed. She is capable of producing up to 2,000 eggs within a single day. To produce drones, she lays unfertilised eggs. A queen bee lives for 3- 5 years. However, when it falters in her egg-laying performance, the hive will start looking for a replacement and feed royal jelly to a developing larva.