Natural hives

Natural beehive in the hollow of a tree

Honey bees in the subgenus Apis use caves, rock cavities and hollow trees as natural nesting sites. Members of other subgenera have exposed aerial combs. The nest is composed of multiple honeycombs, parallel to each other, with a relatively uniform bee space. It usually has a single entrance. Western honey bees prefer nest cavities approximately 45 litres in volume and avoid those smaller than 10 or larger than 100 litres. Western honey bees show several nest-site preferences: the height above ground is usually between 1 metre (3.3 ft) and 5 metres (16 ft), entrance positions tend to face downward, south-facing entrances are favored (in the Northern Hemisphere), and nest sites over 300 metres (980 ft) from the parent colony are preferred. Bees usually occupy the nests for several years.

The bees often smooth the bark surrounding the hive entrance, and the cavity walls are coated with a thin layer of hardened plant resin (propolis). Honeycombs are attached to the walls along the cavity tops and sides, but small passageways are left along the comb edges. The basic nest architecture for all honeybees is similar: honey is stored in the upper part of the comb; beneath it are rows of pollen-storage cells, worker-brood cells, and drone-brood cells, in that order. The peanut-shaped queen cells are normally built at the lower edge of the comb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beehive#Natural_hives

Types of Natural Beehives

By Phil Whitmer, eHow Contributor

Approximately 20,000 different species of bees exist worldwide, occupying every habitat that contains flowering plants. Bees live in a symbiotic relationship with flowers, having evolved a long tongue or proboscis for lapping up nectar. Many bees are social insects, living and working together in highly organized colonies or communities. They live in various kinds of natural habitations called hives or nests.

Feral or wild Apis mellifera honeybees are eusocial, meaning they live in large, well-organized colonies employing a strict division of labor in regards to building and maintaining hives and caring for offspring. Commonly building their hives in hollow trees, they are cavity dwellers, a characteristic that makes the species easily domesticated. In the wild, they will seek out an enclosed space with a capacity of 15 to 100 liters in which to build their hive. Once the bees have selected a suitable tree with a hollow trunk high enough off the ground to deter honey hunters and with a south-facing, downward-pointing entrance, they set to work preparing their new hive. The bees strip off outer layers of bark to smooth the walls, then seal and coat them with propolis or "bee glue" made from tree and plant resins in preparation for building wax honeycombs.

Bumblebees, of the genus Bombus, prefer to locate their natural beehives underground, usually in abandoned animal burrows and tunnels. After emerging from hibernation in the spring the queen bumblebee will select a hive site, as bumblebees only use a nest for one year. She will line the hole in the ground with dry grass and moss in preparation for the first brood of worker bees. The workers will sometimes build a wax canopy over the hive entrance to deter their predators, mainly skunks.

Aerial, or open-air, hives are constructed by southeastern Asian honey \bees belonging to the genera Micrapis and Megapis. These permanent natural hives are similar to the temporary swarm nests of the Apis mellifera honey bees. The Asian bees construct honey and brooder combs attached to exposed tree limbs or cliff faces. They coat the immediate surrounding area with waxy propolis to prepare it for comb construction. The parallel, evenly spaced, rows of combs are covered by the bodies of the bee colony members for protection from the elements and predators. During rainstorms the bees on the outer layer extend their wings over the swarm to keep the inner combs dry.

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