Talk:Beehive (beekeeping)

Untitled
I am looking for plans for a Smith beehive. If you can send me one please e mail me at 

Many thanks

Richard Wildy

Merge/Move to Wikibooks
There's Langstroth hive and Top-bar hive. Are there others? Those pages are getting pretty detailed. Perhaps some of that information would be better off being moved to wikibooks? Ewlyahoocom 02:01, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I recommend against the merge. These are reasonable drill-down articles from the main article.  They have already been expanded past the mere stub stage.  As to moving them to Wikibooks, I think that would be inconsistent with our other decisions for inclusion.  These are real topics of long-standing interest to professionals.  In my opinion, they are considerably more appropriate for the encyclopedia than our thousands of drill-down articles on individual television episodes or pokemon characters.  Rossami (talk) 14:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Also against. This article goes into detail which would be excessive in the Beehive article. Kerowyn 09:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Ditto, here. Rossami puts it well. Pollinator 17:50, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Also against. The Beekeeping article would be distracted by the history of Langstroth.  M Becker (a hobby beekeeper)
 * Ditto here Shoefly 01:22, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm removing the merge suggestion as no one has voted for merging the article, and I also agree that this type of hive requires its own page. --Vellmont 04:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I second this motion to remove the merge suggestion. Shoefly 02:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

top bar hives
the article on top bar hives could do with a diagram to ilustrate the differences better

WikiProject Beekeeping
I've put this article in WikiProject Beekeeping to help organisation and improvement of articles. I'm just trying to rustle up interest - if anyone is interested in being a member, please just sign up on the main project page - you can do as much or little as you like! M a rtinp23 17:08, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you use this image?
Is this picture of the bee shelter at Hartpury any use to you chaps? My understanding is that it held 28 skeps, and hails originally from Nailsworth. The date given for its origin varies, some say 16th century, some early 19th century. google search Mr Stephen 21:11, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I just happened to come to this article almost by chance and saw this picture - it is a fantastic! How many people would ever guess that such a think existed? It really belongs in the main article. Hi There 21:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed! A very fine picture. I've included it in the article. It's my first time working with an image in Wikipedia, so I encourage someone with more experience (or better taste) to improve the placement.

Request
Would it be too much to ask a bee expert to describe the intricate structure of a natural beehive? Such as how do they make sure they can travel from place to place, and is there organization similar to ants nests or termites nests? I've seen some gigantic bee hives, it is difficult to imagine such a small creature could create such a complex building. -Kristan Wifler - The best description of natural nest is by T. D. Seeley and R. A. Morse (1976)"The nest of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.)". Here you have some link to the article abstract from. Full text you can get from here. In natural hive as in hive made by man the combs are parallel more or less. Bees are using footstep marks as the termites and aunts do, however this is not in the purpose of marking a highways in hive. There is complicated system of communication between bees in hive based on pheromones transfer and touch in most cases. I really do not know if termites and ants have similar division of work funded on age. Bee workers in hive are in general younger then field bees and the younger are receivers and packers of honey. In some extend they are also responsible for pollen packing too. There are separated areas in hive for brood, pollen and honey. The essential purpose of colony is rearing brood, ant it takes place in center of the nest. The pollen (protein food) is first need to grow new organisms. Multi-thousand touches and pheromones exchange dictate to put pollen directly side of brood area. Nectar instead needs to be condensed by evaporation and this process is undertaken in areas were the space is abundant. In fact the system of interaction and communication is quite complicated, the above is only a basic scheme. For more you can read here:. I hope the pdf links will work for you. The classic good book regarding how hive works is Lindauer, M. (1953) Division of labuor in the honeybee colony" the other good book is Seeley, T.D. 1995 "Wisdom of the hive: the social physiology of honey bee colonies". The hives which you are seeing are somewhat artificial systems. Bees in most circumstances do not find very large cavities for their shelters. As you can imagine not many trees grow to such size to have 200 liter cavity or bigger. The size of 80L natural cavity should be considering a big one. Beekeepers in first place manage to limit swarming, second save wax combs for reuse during years. Their colonies can grow to its maximum size 60-80 thousand of bees or more, if combined with other one. The saved wax combs is huge benefit as save energy and time (1kg of wax is equal 7 or more kg of honey).

Change to section "Bee gums"
The section titled "Bee gums" contained the following sentence:
 * This was done by inserting a metal container of burning sulphur into the gum, an act that modern beekeepers find abhorrent.

I removed the phrase "an act that modern beekeepers find abhorrent." While intuition tells me that this is probably true of most beekeepers today, we can't rely on intuition here. I don't think we can say, with any certainty, that this is true, so I've removed it. &mdash;CKA3KA (Skazka) 03:17, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Requested move
This article should be at Beehive and should be augmented to include plenty of information about natural, bee-made beehives (about which Wikipedia seems to be completely silent). The material at Beehive should go to Beehive (disambiguation). --Doradus 19:54, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yep. This is uncontroversial. Pro hib it O ni o ns  (T) 21:05, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * should this talk page be merged with that at beehive? It seems odd to have this talk remaining at a no longer existing page.Cliff (talk) 23:12, 3 March 2017 (UTC)