Beehive

A beehive is a box built to house a colony of honey bees, with frames that lift out so the keeper can read the comb, judge the colony's health and take honey without wrecking the nest. Honey is the usual reason given for keeping one, but on a planted site the greater return is pollination - bees carrying pollen between flowers so fruit and seed set. Wild bees do some of that already; a hive makes the supply something stocked rather than hoped for.

Where the hive stands decides much of how it fares. Bees need drinkable water within about 400 m (a quarter mile), with stones or wood in it to perch on, or they recruit to the nearest open water, often a pool or stock trough. The entrance faces east or south so morning sun starts them working, with a windbreak on the cold side and dry ground clear of foot and livestock traffic. The box stands about 45 cm (18 in) up to exclude skunks and rodents, and afternoon shade helps where summers are hot. Forage is a landscape matter, not a garden one: a colony works a radius of roughly 3 km (2 miles), so most of the bloom it lives on stands on ground the keeper does not control.

The box is carpentry; the colony is livestock, and upkeep is the real cost: weekly inspections through the growing season, mite checks every couple of months, a midwinter stores check and frames replaced every three to five years. Varroa mites kill a hive outright - untreated they finish a colony in about three years - but starvation is more common still, and it takes 27 to 30 kg (60 to 65 lb) of honey or fed syrup above the cluster before the cold, because the cluster eats upward and can reach the lid before winter ends. Swarming, brood disease and predators each end colonies too. A new colony rarely gives surplus honey in its first season, so budgeting honey from year one is wrong. The wax pared off the comb at harvest is the usual raw material for candle making.