Beekeeping Made Easy

                     Deep Hive Body

  Previous Page

Hive boxes are call hive bodies or supers.  When used to hold brood they are referred to as brood chambers.  Brood chambers can be any size box.  One could keep bees in all shallow, medium, or deep boxes.  However, the most commonly used set up would use a deep hive body or two deep hive bodies for a brood chamber.  A beekeeper begins to develop his/her beekeeping style when selecting the type of brood chamber he/she will use.

In the Southern part of the United States, one will find a deep brood chamber in use with a shallow or medium super above it for the queen to lay eggs.  This is adequate.  However, in the North, the bees will need approximately 90 pounds of surplus honey to make it thru the winter season.  Thus, the popularity of two deep hive bodies used as a brood chamber.   One brood chamber is not quite large enough to keep a viable queen producing over 60,000 worker bees.  We have seen problems when a student buys a starter set ( These are sold as beekeeping starter sets and include smoker, bee veil, hive tool, boardman feeder, one deep box, frames, foundation, top cover, bottom board and inner cover.)   The problem is that only one hive body is included in the set.  It will do well for a short period of time after a package of bees is introduced into it but the population of bees literally explodes and as the population grows, the bees need more room.  This is fixed by adding more hive bodies (supers).   If the supers are not added, the hive and the queen will swarm. (more on that later)

The general dimensions of a brood box will vary according to bee supply manufacture design.   Some boxes will have a space above the frames (called a bee space) and some will have the bee space below the frames.  3/8 of an inch may not seem like much, but it can cause trouble.  Mixing boxes with the space at the top with boxes with the space at the bottom creates a problem for the beekeeper.  If such an event should occur as much as 3/4 of an inch could be left between two hive bodies.  This is not good!  Why?  Because the bees will build burr comb in the space between the two boxes with 3/4 inch space.  On the other hand, when two boxes leave no bee space at all, the bees will use propolis to glue the hive bodies together.  When buying hive bodies, try to purchase all hive bodies from the same bee supplier.  Also realize that hive bodies are sold in different grades.  #1 is a box without knots.  Commercial boxes will have some tight knots and budget boxes will have larger knots.  There is a big price difference between #1 and budget boxes.  Also check what wood is used to make the boxes.  Many are made from Ponderosa Pine and I have noticed that many bee suppliers do not state which wood the hives are made from.   Just one, Rossmans Apiaries of Moultrie, Georgia have made hive bodies from quality Cypress for a long period of time.  One of the best bee boxes ever made was made by the A.I. Root Company but they no longer make their own boxes.

The deep hive body:

When buying hive bodies, they are KD.  KD stands for knocked down.  This means you must nail them together and add the hardware in order to use it.  The ends of the hive body have rabbets cut into them for frames to rest.  This rabbet is usually equipped with a metal frame rest.   Usually 10 frames are used in a brood chamber.  However, some beekeepers will use 9 frames.  We will discuss Stoller Frame Spacers when we get to honey supers.