Apiary

The apiary houses your bees and shelters working queen bees. It also allows princesses and drones to mate. Apiaries are rather difficult to produce yourself and will require some infrastructure. However you might be able to find beekeepers in villages that have a few and might even be willing to trade you some for a bit of wood. Also, some houses in villages have apiaries in the yards, proving a free source of them.

For the Apiary to work correctly,

It mustn't be raining (certain bees can ignore this).
The apiary's view of the sky can't be obstructed (certain bees can ignore this).
It MUST be day (certain bees can ignore this).
There needs to be at least one flower in the immediate vicinity (required flowers can vary by bee, but most will be satisfied by vanilla dandelion and roses).
The apiary must be in a biome accepted by the queen residing inside it.

Apiary does not require power to operate and - if stocked with the right bees - will occasionally grow flowers around it while operating. Buildcraft pipes are able to remove bee products, bee princesses, and bee drones from the side of the Apiary. The Apiary accepts bee queens or bee princesses through pipes connected to any side, it will only accept a new drone or princess if the slot for either is currently empty.

You can break the apiary using a pickaxe, not an axe as the wooden texture would suggest, any vanilla pickaxe will work.

GUI[]

I. Queen Slot:
Contains the current queen or possibly a princess. The left-hand side bar shows you the current health of the queen.
II. Drone Slot:
If the queen slot is occupied by a princess, the mating process will be initiated when a drone is found in this slot. The mating process will consume the princess and a drone to produce a queen whose type is determined by the species of both princess and drone.
III. Frame Slots:
These slots can be filled with frames to increase production dramatically.
IV. Output Inventory:
Products will appear in this inventory. When a queen dies, the succeeding princess and drones will also be deposited here. A queen will always produce a single princess and one to three drones. Main product produced by bees are honeycombs although certain bees have side products as well.