Lesson 04 – Inner and Outer Covers
LESSON 4: Hive Components: Lesson Four: Inner & Outer Covers
Today, we continue becoming familiar with the actual beehive box. It is important to know and to understand how the wooden ware fits together. In previous lessons, we started at the bottom and worked our way up the hive. Now we are ready to take a look at the two most top pieces, the inner cover and the top cover.
There are notches in the inner cover rim, allowing the bees to have a top entrance or exit if they so choose and to increase ventilation.
Inner covers with notches make it difficult to seal the top of the hive in the event it becomes necessary, like when you want to seal your hive to move them, or keep them in when farmers spray chemicals or when other hives may try to rob the hive.
So, to add ventilation, we are using a full open screen top cover which greatly increases ventilation for our hive. I started using these two years ago on recommendation of Shelly, my Master Bee Keeper mentor and we have both enjoyed success as a result.