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By: Ikedi Ani-okoye.

Business beehives

The bad news: It's all new territory, and it's all over the place. The audience you want to attract is probably fragmented into many different beehives, and you'll have to learn how to navigate the new waters.

For instance, if you're an organizational communicator, your audience is probably not members of "Your Company Beehive" who are eagerly awaiting your next communication - instead, they could be rollerbladers, poets, NASCAR enthusiasts, etc., and you'll have to figure out how to grab their common interests to create your own community. If you're marketing a product, you might want to find out how different beehive segments can use it, and communicate to them individually - at least in some part of your marketing. Interesting, huh?

Beehive harvesting

To harvest your honey, you simply remove the bars with honeycomb. Unlike traditional methods, you won't have to take the hive apart and disturb the bees as much. Not only is the top bar hive less stressful to harvest for you, it also does not disturb the bees as much. In addition to honey, the top bar hive has more beeswax to harvest.

You also do not need a honey extractor/centrifuge or uncapping knife which saves you thousands of dollars. Smoking is completely unnecessary and many top bar hive users do not wear protective clothing either. (For the beginner I do advise to use some kind of protection, gloves and veil as the minimum!) Once you remove the honey comb, the bees will go about their business as usual. Try that on a Langstroth hive.

Beehives explained

A beehive is, in a general sense, an enclosed structure in which some species of Honey bees (genus Apis) live and raise their young. Natural beehives (typically referred to simply as "nests") are naturally-occurring structures occupied by honey bee colonies, while domesticated honey bees are kept in man-made beehives in a location known as an apiary; it is these man-made structures that are most typically referred to as "beehives". Only species of the subgenus Apis live in hives, and, of these, only the Western honey bees (Apis mellifera) and the Eastern honey bees (Apis cerana) are kept in domestication.

CONCLUSION

Traditional beehives provided an enclosure for the bee colony but little more was needed. Because there is no internal structure provided for the bees to start from, the bees fill the space in the hive with honeycomb. The comb is often cross-attached and cannot be moved without destroying it. This is sometimes called a 'fixed-frame' hive to differentiate it from the modern 'movable-frame' hives. Harvest generally destroyed the hives, though there were some adaptations with extra top baskets which could be removed when the bees filled them with honey.