[f. BEE sb.1 + -HIVE sb.]
1. A receptacle used as a home for bees; usually made of thick straw work in the shape of a dome; but there are modern contrivances made of many materials, and adapted to special purposes.
c. 1325. Coer de L., 2885. And commaunded hys men, belyve To bryng up many a bee-hyve.
1483. Cath. Angl., 26. Behyve, apiarium.
1593. Shaks., 2 Hen. VI., IV. i. 109. Drones sucke not Eagles blood, but rob Bee-hiues.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., III. 611. The farmhouse peeping from among beehives and apple-blossoms.
fig. 1616. R. Carpenter, Larum Love, 33. A profitable and behoouefull member in the Bee-hiue of Christs Church.
2. Name of a nebula in the constellation Cancer.
1869. Dunkin, Midn. Sky, 136. A small nebulous-looking object in the crab’s body, is known by the name of the Præsepe, or the Beehive.
3. Comb. and attrib., chiefly in sense of ‘shaped like a bee-hive,’ as in beehive-basket, -chair (i.e., with a top like a bee-hive), beehive-hut, -oven; also beehive-like, beehive-shaped, adjs.
1816. Southey, Essays (1832), I. 181. His place in the chimney-corner, or the bee-hive chair.
1858. W. Ellis, Vis. Madagascar, ix. 235. Low, beehive-shaped huts.
1863. Lubbock, Preh. Times, ii. (1878), 56. From these we pass naturally to the beehive houses.
1881. Raymond, Mining Gloss., Beehive oven, an oven for the manufacture of coke, shaped like the old-fashioned beehive.
1884. J. Colborne, Hicks Pasha, 84. The … beehive huts of the narrow street.
