apiary

American  

[ay-pee-er-ee] / ˈeɪ piˌɛr i /

noun

• apiaries
  plural

1. a place in which a colony or colonies of bees are kept, as a stand or shed for beehives or a bee house containing a number of beehives.

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apiary British  

/ ˈeɪpɪərɪ /

noun

1. a place where bees are kept, usually in beehives

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• apiaries
  plural

Etymology

Origin of apiary

1645–55; < Latin apiārium beehive, equivalent to api ( s ) bee + -ārium -ary

Explanation

An apiary is a structure for keeping bees. If you love to eat fresh honey and don't have access to a farmer's market, you might consider building an apiary in your backyard. Apiaries have nothing to do with apes! Rather, the word derives from apis, the Latin word for "bee." Humans have raised bees for their honey for thousands of years; the oldest known apiaries were built by ancient Egyptians. The word itself didn't appear until the 1650s, around the time that apiarists, or beekeepers, started constructing apiaries resembling the ones in current use. Today, there are apiaries of various sizes on every continent and in every U.S. state.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

apiary apiaries

Brandon Teller, one of the county’s most prominent beekeepers, saw a Watch Duty fire notification on May 19 and headed straight to his apiary.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026

Gray said she hopes the findings will be useful to beekeepers while planning their apiary management strategies, as well as be a springboard for future studies.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2024

The farm also has an apiary operation that produces incredible honey, two rescue steers, and a smattering of laying hens.

From Salon ● May 2, 2024

"In every apiary we have there will always be one white box - just one white. Those are ones Willie Smith made himself after the First World War," Mr Hood said.

From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2023

The bees in the well stocked apiary had already gathered a fine supply of honey from the wild flowers of the surrounding prairies.

From Solaris Farm A Story of the Twentieth Century by Milan C. Edson

Grozinger noted that in managed apiaries, honey bee colonies are often placed very close together, and the bees can transmit viruses by drifting into each other's colonies or by foraging on the same flowers.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 14, 2023

He spends most of his days tending eight apiaries around Los Angeles, but he doesn’t sell honey.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2021

To provide the honey for his range of meads Mr Cooper is also a professional beekeeper, who looks after more than 500 hives at 50 different locations or apiaries across Wales.

From BBC ● Oct. 27, 2021

When the researchers placed buffets of animal dung near several apiaries, bees harvested clumps of it, dabbing their nests in carefully mounded lumps, each roughly the size of a sesame or poppy seed.

From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2020

I have thus briefly quoted from famous authorities, to impress upon those who keep apiaries the importance of transporting their bees from pasture to pasture.

From A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive With an Abstract of Wildman's Complete Guide for the Management of Bees Throughout the Year by William Augustus Munn