Did you know that in a bee house there is more than one story? I am going to be talking about each story in the house. It is important to know that there is more than one because they are used for different things and if you switch them it is bad news.

The first thing you put down on the ground are blocks because the water can not get on the hive for very long. After that you put the baseboard. The baseboard helps keep ventilation and allows the bees to leave the hive.

The next thing you have is a brood box, which is ten frames that are full of eggs and larva. There are two brood boxes; this is important because the queen needs room to lay eggs. Also the brood boxes are the only box that stays on the whole year.

On top of the brood box there is a queen excluder. The queen excluder keeps the queen out of the honey boxes. This is really important because if the queen got up in the top boxes then she will lay where the honey is and that is not good.Laying in the honey suppers is not good because people do not want bee eggs in the honey.

Now there are honey boxes. The honey boxes have 9 frames in it because the bees will draw out the frame and you will get more honey that way. There can be as many of these honey boxes as the bees need because if they already filled up the first box then you just keep putting more on.

There are also feeders for the bees. You put sugar water in these feeders. There are two main feeders for bees. There is a top feeder which goes on top of the brood boxes. Also, there are entrance feeders which go on the bottom board. We use the entrance feeder because no bees die this way.

Finally there are two top covers. There is an inner cover which helps with ventilation.  There is also a top cover that helps get heat on the hive also it keeps the rain off the hive. In Kansas you have to put rocks on the top cover so the wind does not blow it over. 

That is all of the parts of a hive you need. All of these things are important to a complete hive. This is a picture of the hive. It is so cool to see how the hive works together. When you work hard all summer then you get honey. In the end it is an extra bonus.