This is a quick tutorial with pictures on what a beehive is like. There are a few different types of hives and this tutorial will be about the most common type of hive called a Langstroth Hive. It is very common and typically when you buy a hive and the various components of a hive this is what you are getting.

First let's take a look here. These are my two beehives. They are langstroth style hives and the one on the left is made of wood and the one on the right (foreground) is made of styrofoam. Some people do have a preference but both seem to be working very well for me. My guess is that the wooden one will last longer but we will see. There are a few advantages to the styrofoam one including being lighter and easier to handle, easier to clean and impervious to insects.

There are some variations in how a hive is set up and it will change over the course of a season but the picture below shows the basic setup. The queen excluder is a very thin sheet that is used only during the honey season and you can't see the inner cover in the picture but I have a picture of it below.

Here is the inner cover, it sits just below the outer cover.

And here is the queen excluder. It is just a thin piece of plastic with slotted holes in it. These holes are large enough to allow worker bees to pass but too small for the queen to pass through.

Deeps and Shallows

You can see in the picture that there are two different heights of the boxes that go into making a hive. These are called "Deeps" and "Shallows". The deeps are of course taller and the shallows are not so tall.

What Goes inside these Deeps and Shallows?

Frames are what go inside these Deeps and Shallows. Each holds ten frames.

This picture shows one of the frames removed so you can see it better.