The house of honeybees is termed as hive or comb. It consists of hexagonal cells made up of wax secreted by the worker’s abdomen. These hives are hanging vertically from rock, building or branches of trees. Each hives has thousands of hexagonal thin walled fragile cells arranged in two opposite rows on a common base.
The resins and gums secreted from the plants are the used for the repairing of the hives. The young stages are generally occupying the lower and the central cells in the hive, which are the ‘BROOD CELLS’. In a dorsata brood cells are similar in shape and size but in other species brood cells are of 3 types viz. WORKER CELL for workers, DRONE CELL for drones and QUEEN CELL for the queen.
The queen cell cannot be used again while the rest are used a number of times. These are no special cells for lodging the adults, which generally keep clustering or moving about on the surface of the comb. The cells are mainly intended for the storage of honey and pollen specially in the upper potion of the comb while those in lower part are for brood rearing.