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The Basic Components of the Honey Bee Hive

The honey bee hive consists of several boxes that are named after their colony use versus simply the size.

The most common naming convention among beginning beekeepers is simply a brood box and a super. The brood box is the box where the queen lays her eggs (the “brood”) and the super box is where the remaining worker bees place the honey stores. So, you may also hear them called honey supers.

The more experience beekeepers tend to use the size and function in their names, so you may a “deep box” or “deep brood box”, which refers to the box as before where the queen lays her eggs.

Super boxes for the Langstroth hive come in 3 sizes:

shallow ask known as
medium also known as an Illinois Super
or the no longer commonly use Wisconsin Super

Then we have top and bottom boards that also come in different variations:

Top boards with inner and outer covers, used mostly up north and Migratory Top boards more commonly used in Florida since we don’t have a huge temperature differential that causes condensation inside the hive.

Bottom boards can be solid or screened. The screened bottom board is known to be used in the control of the varroa destructor mite.

Then we have frames and sometimes we have foundation.

Honey Harvesting

Store / Honey Harvesting

Honey Harvesting Supplies

Now that you’ve removed the honey from the hive, you need to extract it from the frames! There are a variety of tools you can use to accomplish this.

Honey Bottling Supplies

Once you’ve extracted your honey, you need to bottle it to sell or share with friends and family. We have your honey bottling supplies covered, from filter kits to bottling tanks, valves, bottles, and lids. We carry bottles in differing sizes, quantities, and capacities, and lids in different colors as well. For larger quantities we also sell buckets and drums.

What are the” Cottage Food Laws”

In 2011, the Florida Legislature enacted HB 7209 (now Section 500.80, Florida Statutes) (http://leg.state.fl.us/statutes/) allowing individuals to manufacture, sell, and store certain types of “cottage foods” (including honey) in an unlicensed kitchen. “Cottage food operations,” as they are called, require no licensing or permitting from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) and are not inspected by any other state government entity.

Here is a link that will spell it out for you .edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in918

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