Fixed frame beehives - what are they after all? Basically, beehive is the home of bees. Men have been plundering homes for honeybees for hundreds of years to obtain honey, bee larvae and beeswax. Today artificial hives made by man are called beehive as against the natural homes of untamed honeybee colonies.

Domesticated bees, which live in man made beehives, are kept in an apiary or 'bee yard'. The internal arrangement or structure of artificial beehives mimics that of natural bee nests: a packed matrix of hexagonal cells made of beeswax and known as 'honeycomb', which the bees use to store food (honey and pollen), and where they keep their eggs, larvae, and pupae and raise their young.

Man-made Beehives
Since honey and beeswax are the products men seek from bees, most contemporary artificial beehives have removable frames that allow the honeycomb to be removed easily without damaging the bees. Bees are tamed to get honey, beeswax and to pollinate crops. Long-term apiaries are rarely set up for pollination purposes because the bees are only present during the bloom period of the crop. When they are established in organic farms, for example, the hives must be easily transportable. For pollination, normally one hive per acre is enough.

Customary 'Fixed-Frame' Beehives
In the past man-made beehives were without any internal structure for the bees. They were simply artificial cavities provided for bee colonies to inhabit and where the bees would create their own natural honeycomb. They were made from hollowed-out logs, clay pots, wooden boxes, bamboo or straw baskets or even thrown away metal canisters.

Harvesting honey from fixed-frame hives very often resulted in the destruction of the hives because honey extraction was usually done by crushing the wax honeycomb to squeeze out the honey. Fixed-frame beehives (also known as 'fixed-comb' hives) are no longer in widely used. Since it is not possible to inspect the bees and the honeycomb for disease or parasites, they have been banned in numerous countries. Though there are several kinds of fixed-frame beehives, this article will exclude their details.

The pros of traditional fixed-frame beehives:

- Cheaper to construct (usually cost nothing at all)
- Large beeswax production

The cons of traditional fixed-frame beehives:

- It is not possible to inspect the condition of the bee colony because frames can not be removed and replaced
- Limited space leads to swarming
- Mostly, the 'brood' (the young bees) are perished in the honey harvesting procedure.
- Honey production might be disturbed
- Quality of honey could be poor because it gets mixed with pollen, brood, or ashes

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