I got a request to make a bee hive cake similar to this photo. I've never done one before. Exactly how do I do this? Do you have to carve it into this shape (I hope not, I'm not good at carving) or is there another way? Maybe do a bunch of single layer cakes? If you stack single layers of cake, what size cakes would I need to use to get the shape like in the photo? Any links to tutorials or videos would be great too! I tried searching yahoo  but came up with nothing.

10x9x7x5x3 maybe 

and the bees should be about an inch

Definitely stack the different sized cakes.  It would be a nightmare to try and carve it perfectly even!  Whatever size you start with it looks like the following layer is 2" bigger.

looks like modelling chocolate maybe