Since the birth of the modern hive in 1852, hive construction has shown no structural innovation. By favouring the standardised cubic hive, beekeeping turned its back on 4,400 years of architectural diversity. This short volume takes an interest in the period that precedes that homogenisation, going back as far as 2400 BCE: refusing a fixed account lets polymorphism take precedence over linearity, and the history of hives is told from a new point of view.