Hive & Housing
Langstroth Hive
The movable-frame box that made modern beekeeping possible.
The Langstroth hive is a vertical stack of boxes, each holding removable frames that hang parallel to one another. Its whole trick is the bee space — the gap of roughly 6 to 9 mm that bees will neither fill with comb nor seal with propolis. Hold to that spacing and every frame stays loose, which means every frame stays inspectable.
A working colony is usually two deep boxes for the brood nest, with shallower supers stacked on top when the nectar flow arrives. Because the boxes are modular and the frames interchangeable, you can scale a hive up or down, split it, or move brood between colonies without destroying comb.
At a glance
Safety
Full boxes are heavy and awkward, not dangerous in themselves — but a slipped deep of brood can crush bees and provoke a colony badly. Lift from the base with a straight back, and never open a deep box without a smoker lit and a veil on.
Using it well
- Standardise on one frame size across all your hives. Mixed equipment is how you end up unable to move brood where it is needed.
- Keep two spare boxes and ten spare frames per hive. Swarm season always arrives before the equipment does.
- Paint only the exterior, and never the frame rests or the inside of the box.
- Number your boxes so you can record which colony a frame came from.
Compatibility
Hive types
- Langstroth
Bees
European honey bee (Apis mellifera) — all common subspecies
Educational reference only. Hive & Honey sells no equipment and takes no sponsorship. Specifications here describe typical products in this category; check the actual figures for the item you own or intend to buy. Always follow the manufacturer's instructions and your local regulations.
Related equipment
Try it in 3D. There is an interactive simulator for this part of beekeeping. Open the Hive Inspection Simulator.