Bee tree

Wild nest of Apis mellifera ligustica - 06

A bee tree is a tree in which a colony of

honey bees A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus ''Apis'' of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosm ...

makes its home. A colony of bees may live in a bee tree for many years. Most bee trees have a large inner hollow, often with an upper and lower entrance. Colonies in trees have fixed comb, so inspection and management is impossible, as is most harvesting without destroying the colony. A

beekeeper A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees. Beekeepers are also called honey farmers, apiarists, or less commonly, apiculturists (both from the Latin '' apis'', bee; cf. apiary). The term beekeeper refers to a person who keeps honey bees i ...

can perform a cut-out on a gum hive. The trunk is cut open to expose the cavity, and the

comb A comb is a tool consisting of a shaft that holds a row of teeth for pulling through the hair to clean, untangle, or style it. Combs have been used since prehistoric times, having been discovered in very refined forms from settlements dating ba ...

is carefully removed and strapped into standard frames. The frames are then put to a conventional hive, such as a

Langstroth hive In modern American beekeeping, a Langstroth hive is any vertically modular beehive that has the key features of vertically hung frames, a bottom board with entrance for the bees, boxes containing frames for brood and honey (the lowest box for th ...

. The bees will follow into the new hive especially if the

queen Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...

and

brood Brood may refer to: Nature * Brood, a collective term for offspring * Brooding, the incubation of bird eggs by their parents * Bee brood, the young of a beehive * Individual broods of North American Periodical Cicadas: ** Brood X, the largest b ...

can be transferred. If the tree is cut down and the trunk section containing the colony is removed, the result is a log gum or gum hive. A log gum is essentially a bee tree cut into a short section that contained a colony of honey bees. It got its name from the fact that when gum trees die they rot from the inside out, thereby creating a large cavity in which bees would commonly nest. These hives are fixed comb hives and, therefore, medicating and inspecting is almost impossible. Beekeeping Trees {{bee-stub