Glossary of Beekeeping Terms

Apiary a place where beehives are kept; also called a bee yard.

Bee Bread a mixture of pollen and nectar stored in the hive by bees for food.

Bee Space a 3/8-inch gap in a hive that bees naturally leave between combs for movement. Beekeeping equipment is designed to maintain bee space.

Brood the developing stages of bees, including eggs, larvae, and pupae, usually located in the brood chamber of the hive.

Brood Chamber the area in the hive where the queen lays her eggs and where brood is reared.

Capped Brood cells of brood that have been capped with wax by worker bees. These contain larvae that are pupating.

Colony a community of bees, including a queen, drones, and workers, living together in a hive.

Comb the wax structure made by bees to store honey, pollen, and to rear brood.

Drone a male bee whose primary role is to mate with a queen. Drones do not gather nectar or pollen.

Foundation a sheet of wax or plastic used in frames to guide the bees in building straight comb.

Hive the structure in which a bee colony lives. Modern hives are usually Langstroth hives, made up of stacked boxes.

Honey Flow a period when nectar is abundant, and bees are actively collecting nectar to make honey.

Honey Super the part of the hive where bees store honey. It’s typically placed above the brood chamber.

Langstroth Hive a hive design with removable frames, standardized for modern beekeeping.

Nectar a sweet liquid collected by bees from flowers, which is processed into honey.

Nuc (Nucleus Colony) a small colony of bees created from a larger one. It usually contains a queen, workers, and a few frames of brood.

Pollen the fine, powdery substance collected from flowers by bees, which they use as a protein source for feeding brood.

Propolis a sticky resin collected by bees from tree buds and mixed with wax to seal and sterilize the hive.

Queen Bee the only reproductive female in the colony, responsible for laying eggs and producing pheromones that maintain colony cohesion.

Queen Excluder a screen that allows worker bees to pass through but restricts the queen’s movement, often used to keep queen from laying in honey supers.

Robbing when bees from one hive invade another to steal honey, usually happening when nectar is scarce.

Smoker a tool used by beekeepers to puff smoke into the hive, which calms the bees by masking alarm pheromones.

Swarm a large group of bees, including a queen, that leaves a hive to start a new colony.

Supersedure the process where worker bees replace an old or failing queen with a new one by rearing a new queen.

Varroa Mite a parasitic mite that attacks honeybees, considered one of the most serious pests for modern beekeeping.

Worker Bee a female bee that performs all the duties in the hive except for reproduction, including foraging, cleaning, and tending to the brood.