# Create a hive

Anyone can create a hive. The person who creates it becomes its first admin, with an
**Admin group** created automatically. Creation is a **guided wizard** that helps you
design a complete environment — contexts and groups — before anything is created.

Start from **My SweetHive → Hives → Create new**.

## Step 1 — Create

Choose what you want to build: **Company**, **Team**, **School** or **Project** on
SweetHive — or a **Museum** (AerariumChain) / **Academy** (WiredExperience) on the
satellite platforms. Your choice tunes the rest of the wizard.

## Step 2 — Plan

Pick who owns the hive:

- **Personal** — the hive lives on your personal account and its (free) plan.
- **Organisation** — the hive belongs to one of your organisations and runs on the
  organisation's plan. See [Settings](/en/settings/) for creating organisations and
  managing plans.

## Step 3 — Template

Pick a starting structure from the template catalog for your cluster, or start
**Blank**. Your purpose from step 1 preselects a matching template when there is one.
A template describes a ready-made environment: the context tree, the groups, and
which groups are active where.

## Step 4 — Environment

This is the heart of the wizard: a full **tree editor** where you shape the
environment before it exists. You can:

- **add, rename and delete contexts**, nested as deep as you need;
- **add, rename and delete groups**;
- **toggle which groups are active in each context** — deciding, node by node, who
  will see what.

Take your time here: a well-designed tree means visibility takes care of itself later.

## Step 5 — Details

Name the hive, add an optional description, and import a **cover image** — drag to
reposition, zoom with the slider; SweetHive resizes it for you. If the environment
you built is worth reusing, tick **“save this environment as a reusable template”**
and it joins your template catalog for next time.

**Create** applies the whole edited tree in one atomic operation — contexts, groups
and activations come to life together, and you land in the new hive as its admin.

> **Tip:** design groups around *audiences* (Staff, Suppliers, Clients, Board), not
> around org charts. You'll target messages at audiences every day.