Wikipedia
A bee tree is a tree in which a colony of honey bees 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 can perform a cut-out on a gum hive. The trunk is cut open to expose the cavity, and the comb is carefully removed and strapped into standard frames. The frames are then put to a conventional hive, such as a Langstroth hive. The bees will follow into the new hive especially if the queen and brood 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.
Category:Beekeeping Category:Trees
Usage examples of "bee tree".
Sometimes, if the bee tree is small, you can simply cut it down and take the bee gum home with you.
If you are good at it, and I am, you can find the bee line and follow it back to the bee tree.
Crisp fried potatoes, sourdough biscuits to go with a honeycomb procured from a nearby hollow bee tree.
I did find a hole that I thought a bear or two might fall into, and got almost stung to death robbing a bee tree to bait the thing with honey.
And then he went on telling about a bee tree he had cut and about the year when the rabbits, eating loco weed, got so pugnacious packs of them were hazing grizzly bear all about the landscape.