Honey bees live in colonies that are often maintained, fed, and transported by beekeepers. Centuries of selective breeding by humans have created honey bees that produce far more honey than the colony needs. Beekeepers harvest the honey. Beekeepers provide a place for the colony to live and to store honey in. The modern beehive is made up of a series of  rectangular boxes without tops or bottoms placed beside each other. Inside the boxes, frames are hung in parallel, in which bees build up the wax honeycomb in which they both raise brood and store honey. Modern hives enable beekeepers to transport bees, moving from field to field as the crop needs pollinating and allowing the beekeeper to charge for the pollination services they provide.
A colony generally contains one breeding female, or “queen”; a few thousand males, or “drones”; and a large population of sterile female “worker” bees. The population of a healthy hive in mid-summer can average between 40,000 and 80,000 bees. The workers cooperate to find food and use a pattern of “dancing” to communicate with each other.