The bee hive is like a highly efficient multi-story honey factory where a different function takes place on each story. This honey factory provides a home for the bees and honey for the beekeeper. Here are the components that make up a bee hive:

A. Hive Cover - often called a telescoping cover because the cover telescopes over the sides of the top hive box to protect the hive from wind and rain. The hive cover is covered with galvanized metal to withstand the elements.

B. Inner Cover - creates a dead air space between the hive and the top cover that serves as insulation from heat and cold.

C. Shallow Supers - for "surplus" honey storage. Bees store their basic supply of honey in the brood chambers at the bottom of the hive and store their extra honey in the honey supers at the top of the hive for the beekeeper to take.

D. Queen Excluder - keeps the queen bee in the brood chambers where she lays her eggs. Worker bees can pass through the excluder to store honey in the honey supers, but the queen bee is too large to pass through the excluder.

E. Hive Bodies - also called "brood chambers" - these are the living quarters for the bee colony. The queen lays eggs in the cells of the brood chambers and the larva are raised by nurse bees. Bees also store honey for their basic food supply in the hive bodies (brood chambers).

F. Bottom Board - forms the floor of the hive. A wooden entrance reducer is placed in the entrance of the hive where the hive body sits on the bottom board to give the bees room to enter and exit the hive while keeping out mice and cold air during the winter.

G. Hive Stand - supports the hive off the ground to insulate the bottom of the hive from the wet ground, keeping it dry.

Successful beekeeping requires easy manipulation of the frames of brood and honey to provide a "surplus" of honey beyond the amount needed by the bees to live on and rear their young. It is this "surplus" that the beekeeper removes and uses or sells.