The parts of a beehive stack together in a set order, and each piece does a job the colony depends on. From the ground up, a standard Langstroth hive runs through a hive stand, a bottom board, one or more brood boxes, honey supers, frames holding foundation, a queen excluder, an inner cover, and an outer telescoping cover. Once you know what each component does and why it sits where it does, that tower of white boxes stops looking like a puzzle and starts reading like a well-designed house.
Key Takeaways
What Are the Main Parts of a Beehive?
The main parts of a beehive, working from the ground up, are the hive stand, bottom board, brood boxes, honey supers, frames and foundation, queen excluder, inner cover, and outer cover. Each layer sits on the one below it with no fasteners, held in place by gravity and the sticky propolis the bees add. The genius of the Langstroth design, patented in 1852, is that everything is modular and removable, so you can lift out a single frame or add a box without tearing the colony apart. That removability is what separates a managed hive from a hollow log or a fixed-comb skep.
The design hinges on one measurement: bee space. Reverend Lorenzo Langstroth noticed that bees leave a gap of about three-eighths inch (roughly 6 to 9 mm) as a walkway, but fill anything larger with comb and glue anything smaller shut with propolis. Every part of a beehive is built around that gap, which is why frames hang free of the walls and boxes stack without the bees welding them together. If you want the fuller history of the different hive styles, our guide to the Langstroth, top-bar, and Warre hive lays them side by side.
Hive Stand and Bottom Board
The hive stand is the base that lifts the whole colony off the ground, and the bottom board is the floor the first box sits on. Raising the hive six to 18 inches keeps the wooden boxes away from ground moisture, discourages skunks and toads, and saves your back when you inspect. A stand can be a purpose-built frame, a pair of cinder blocks, or a simple pallet, as long as it is level side to side and tilted a hair forward so rain drains out the entrance.
The bottom board comes in two styles. A solid bottom board is a flat tray, while a screened bottom board swaps the center for hardware cloth, which improves ventilation and lets mites that groom off fall through and out of reach. Many beekeepers in warm climates run screened boards year round and slide a solid insert underneath during cold snaps. Both styles create the main entrance at the front, a gap about three-quarters inch tall that runs the width of the box.
Entrance Reducer and Mouse Guard
An entrance reducer is a notched wooden stick that shrinks the front opening, and it matters most for small or stressed colonies. A new package or a small nuc cannot defend a full-width entrance against robbing bees and wasps, so the reducer narrows the door to a one-inch or four-inch notch the guards can actually hold. As the colony grows through summer, you open the entrance back up so foragers are not stacking up in a traffic jam.
In late fall the same slot becomes a spot for a metal mouse guard, since a warm winter cluster is an inviting nest for rodents. These small parts of a beehive are cheap and easy to lose in the grass, but skipping them costs whole colonies to robbing or mice. Keep a couple in your kit alongside the rest of your basic beekeeping equipment.
Brood Boxes: Where the Colony Lives
Brood boxes, almost always deep boxes, are the living quarters where the queen lays and the workers raise the next generation. A deep box measures 9 and five-eighths inches tall and holds eight or 10 frames, depending on whether you run an eight-frame or 10-frame hive. Most colonies overwinter in one or two deeps, which give the queen room to lay a broad pattern of eggs and the bees space to store the pollen and honey that feed the brood.
A deep box packed with honey and comb can weigh 80 to 90 pounds, which is why plenty of keepers now run all medium boxes for everything, brood included, to spare their backs. The trade-off is more boxes to manage. Whatever depth you choose, the brood nest is the heart of the colony, and keeping it healthy is the whole game, a topic we cover in maintaining a healthy beehive.
Honey Supers: Mediums and Shallows
Honey supers are the boxes you add above the brood nest to hold the surplus honey you will harvest, and they come in medium and shallow depths. A medium super stands 6 and five-eighths inches tall and weighs around 50 pounds when full, while a shallow is 5 and eleven-sixteenths inches and runs closer to 35 to 40 pounds. Lighter boxes are easier to lift off during a harvest, which is the main reason supers are shorter than brood deeps.
You add supers as a nectar flow builds, giving the bees empty comb to fill so they do not crowd the brood nest or swarm. The word “super” simply means the box sits above the part of the hive you leave for the colony. When the frames are capped and the flow ends, those supers are what you pull for extraction.
Frames and Foundation
Frames are the removable wooden or plastic rectangles that hang inside every box, and foundation is the sheet inside each frame that gives bees a starting point to build straight comb. A deep frame is about 9 and one-eighth inches tall, and it hangs from a lip on the box so it stays centered with bee space on every side. This is the part of the Langstroth system that lets you lift out one comb, read the brood pattern, and slide it back without damage.
Foundation comes as beeswax sheets on wire supports or one-piece plastic, both stamped with the hexagonal cell pattern to steer the bees. Some keepers skip foundation entirely and let bees draw natural comb from a starter strip, which gives cleaner wax but less structure. Either way, the frame is the unit you actually inspect, and a hive lives or dies by what those combs hold.
Queen Excluder
A queen excluder is a flat grid of wire or plastic that sits between the brood boxes and the honey supers, sized so workers pass through but the larger queen cannot. Its one job is to keep the queen laying eggs down in the brood nest so your harvest honey stays free of brood and cocoons. The gaps run about 0.163 inch, wide enough for a forager loaded with nectar and narrow enough to stop the queen.
Excluders are mildly controversial. Critics call them “honey excluders” because some bees hesitate to cross the barrier, which slows how fast supers fill. Many beekeepers use them only when a specific problem calls for it, and others run without one and simply harvest around any stray brood. It is one of the few parts of a beehive you can genuinely choose to leave out.
Inner Cover and Outer Cover
The inner cover and outer cover are the two-part lid that seals the top of the stack. The inner cover is a thin panel with an oval hole in the middle, and it creates a dead-air gap that insulates the top, gives you a surface to pry against, and keeps the bees from gluing the outer lid down tight. That center hole doubles as an upper entrance and a port for a feeder jar.
The outer cover is the weatherproof roof. A telescoping cover is the common style, a metal-clad lid with sides that hang down over the top box like a shoebox lid, shedding rain and snow. A migratory cover sits flush with the box edges instead, which lets hives pack tight on a truck but offers less overhang. Together these two covers finish the stack and turn a column of open boxes into a sealed, dry home.
How the Stack Goes Together
Assembled from the bottom up, the order is: hive stand, bottom board, entrance reducer at the front, one or two deep brood boxes, an optional queen excluder, one or more honey supers, the inner cover, and the outer cover on top. Nothing screws together. Each box rests on the one below it, and the bees seal the seams with propolis, which is why your hive tool exists to break those bonds at inspection.
That modularity is the point. You add supers as the season builds, pull them at harvest, and drop back down to a deep or two for winter. If you are still assembling your first setup, our walkthrough on how to start beekeeping covers the order you actually buy and build these parts. For a labeled cross-section you can print, the beekeeping pages from Penn State Extension show every component in a single diagram.
How Top-Bar and Warre Hives Differ
Top-bar and Warre hives share the movable-comb principle but drop many of the parts above. A horizontal top-bar hive has no frames, no foundation, no supers, and no excluder. Instead, bees build comb hanging from a row of simple wooden bars laid across a long trough-shaped body, and you harvest by lifting out whole combs. There is one box, worked sideways rather than stacked, so the heavy lifting of full supers disappears.
A Warre hive is vertical like a Langstroth but far simpler. It uses small square boxes with only top bars inside, no full frames, and you add empty boxes to the bottom rather than the top, which mimics how bees build downward in a hollow tree. Both styles skip the queen excluder and the frame-and-foundation system, trading inspection precision and honey yield for lower cost and a more hands-off feel. Neither is better across the board, they simply move the parts around to serve different goals.
If you are choosing a first hive, start with what you plan to do with it. A standard 10-frame or eight-frame Langstroth gives you the widest supply of interchangeable parts, the most local mentors who can look inside with you, and the easiest path to a real honey harvest, which is why we point most new keepers there. Pick all-medium boxes if your back is the deciding factor, add a queen excluder only once you have a reason to, and leave the top-bar or Warre route for when you want simplicity over yield. Get the stack right from stand to cover, and every inspection after that gets easier.
Frequently Asked Questions About Parts of a Beehive
What are the parts of a beehive called?
The core parts of a Langstroth beehive are the hive stand, bottom board, entrance reducer, brood boxes (deeps), honey supers (mediums or shallows), frames and foundation, queen excluder, inner cover, and outer or telescoping cover. They stack from the ground up with no fasteners, held together by gravity and the bees’ own propolis. Each part is removable, which is what lets you inspect a colony frame by frame.
What is the difference between a brood box and a honey super?
A brood box is the deep box near the bottom where the queen lays eggs and the colony raises young, while a honey super is a shorter box above it that holds surplus honey for harvest. Brood deeps are 9 and five-eighths inches tall and can weigh 80 to 90 pounds full, so supers are made shallower to keep the harvest liftable. You leave the brood boxes for the bees and pull the supers.
Do I need a queen excluder on a beehive?
No, a queen excluder is optional. It keeps the queen out of your honey supers so harvest frames stay free of brood, but some bees are slow to cross it, which can hold back how fast supers fill. Many keepers run without one and simply work around any stray brood, adding an excluder only when a specific problem calls for it.
What is bee space in a beehive?
Bee space is the gap of about three-eighths inch (6 to 9 mm) that honey bees leave open as a walkway. Bees fill any larger gap with comb and seal any smaller gap with propolis, so the entire Langstroth hive is built around that measurement. It is the reason frames hang free of the walls and boxes stack cleanly without the bees gluing everything into one solid block.
