hive
part of speech
noun (a hive, hives); verb (hive off — UK; hive, hived)
meaning for a pupil
1) A hive is a home for bees, either a box made by people or a natural nest. tree →
2) A hive can mean all the bees living in it. tree →
3) A hive of activity is a very busy place full of people working. tree →
4) (UK) To hive off part of something is to separate it to be run on its own. tree →
5) Hives (plural) is an itchy red rash on the skin, often from an allergy. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science, a hive has a queen, workers and drones; they make honey and wax in hexagon-shaped cells. In everyday life, the classroom before a party is «a hive of activity». In safety, don't knock a hive; bee stings hurt and some people are allergic. Phrases: beehive, a hive of activity, hive off, break out in hives.
examples
- The beekeeper opened the hive to collect honey. tree →
- A hive can hold thousands of bees. tree →
- The kitchen was a hive of activity before the party. tree →
- The bees flew back to the hive at sunset. tree →
- She broke out in hives after eating nuts. tree →
- The cells inside a hive are hexagons, with 6 sides each. tree →
- The company hived off its toy business. (UK, formal) tree →
- Don't poke a hive — the bees will sting. tree →
- He went on farther and saw a hive of bees in the forest. tree →
note
Countable noun. «Hives» the rash is a plural with no singular. A «beehive» is the same thing as a hive. Bees build hexagon cells; a hexagon has 6 sides. Myth: bees don't die after every sting — honeybees usually do, but bumblebees and wasps can sting again.
In the corpora
- A hive can have about 50,000 bees: one queen, tens of thousands of female workers and some hundreds of males called drones.
- In autumn the beekeeper lifts the hive to check its weight, to be sure the bees have enough food for winter.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «hive» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.