The straw skep is a familiar part of the beekeeper’s equipment. Nowadays they are used primarily to gather summer swarms and winter cobwebs but in the past, skeps were used to hive bees all year round.
Origins
The word skep is thought to have come from an Icelandic Norse word skeppa meaning a straw basket. Their original purpose was as a half-bushel grain measure. Saxon beekeepers are thought to have been hiving bees in skeps since early Christian times. They came to Britain after the Romans left, around 400 A.D. and they brought their skeps with them. Presumably they came to Ireland at about the same time.
Before skeps the only purpose-made hive in these parts was the alveary: a sharply conical willow or hazel basket weatherproofed with a layer of green cow manure mixed with ashes or lime. The word alveary has Latin roots but despite these origins there is no evidence that the alveary was a Roman invention.
Although eventually superseded by the skep, the process was not immediate and the alveary was still being used by some beekeepers into the 19th century. The earliest mention of skeps in Ireland was in the 500’s when they were used by the beekeeping St Gobhnait, head of a convent at Ballyvourney, Cork who drove off cattle thieves by hurling skeps of bees at them.
Skep-beekeeping
Having no built-in floor, skep hives were placed on either rush mats or hardwood platforms to keep out the cold. In addition they were often tucked into purpose-made alcoves in stone walls known as bee-boles. In winter, straw was stuffed around the sides for insulation and some bee-boles even had wooden doors which could be closed in foul weather. There is nothing new in the molly-coddling of bees!
Then, as now, beekeepers were fixated with swarming but whereas we are intent on preventing swarming, the skep-beekeepers depended on their bees to swarm and indeed encouraged it by careful choice of the size of the skep – colder and wetter northern and western regions tending towards a smaller skep to ensure the necessary congestion for the native bees.
Throughout the swarming season, beekeepers would catch and hive swarms in vacant skeps, the more the merrier. At the end of the season they would select the heaviest and the lightest of their stocks and stupefy the bees to remove the combs of honey.
A method outlined by Keys in his 1814 Treatise (see below) involved placing skep and bees over a custom made fume box where smoke from smouldering slices of giant puffball, would stupefy the bees which would then obligingly fall from the combs allowing the beekeeper to remove the honey. After 10 minutes or so, the bees would recover and go about their business as before.
The remaining mid-weight hives were taken through the winter for the following year.
An alternative method was to ‘drive’ the bees from a full skep into an empty one. The full skep containing honey and bees was turned upside down – the domed top wedged into the top of an iron bucket. An empty skep was then set at an angle to the open end, fixed firmly in place with skewers and the whole arrangement covered with a cloth. The sides of the upturned full skep were then vigorously drummed. The drumming noise would drive the bees up out of the full skep and into the empty one leaving the combs of honey behind for the beekeeper. Unlike the fume method – the bees would be angry for 3-4 days afterwards.
Into the present
Skep beehives were in common use all the way up until the beginning of the 20th century when the advantages of wooden hives with removable frames based on the bee-space discoveries of Rev. Langstroth in 1851 saw the wooden National and Commercial hives finally take over. Even in the face of this competition, the skep was slow to go and the records of the Cumberland and Westmorland Beekeepers’ Association for 1906 show that 25% of colonies were still housed in skep hives.
Sources
Alston, F, Skeps, Their History, Making And Use. 1987. Northern Bee Books. Hebden Bridge.
Jones, S., Skeps, tools and accessories. 2007. IBRA. Cardiff
Keys, J., A Treatise on the Breeding and Management of Bees. 1814. London
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Thanks for this excellent description. I’ve been trying to get a clearer understanding of how skeps were actually used during the Middle Ages, which is difficult because most written sources focus on the social or economic aspects of beekeeping (e.g religious symbology of bees or tax and tithe records).
There are a few things that perplex me. Firstly, there are a great many charms and prayers “against a swarm” and I’m yet to find any that encourage bees to swarm. You said that skeps were made small to encourage swarming. Can you please tell me where this information comes from? The quote saying the bees don’t like their hive too large is certainly try, but i can’t tell if they’re talking about encouraging swarming or just keeping the hive warm and orderly (we use langstroth hives and make sure there’s not excessive space). Smaller hive size would mean less resources in a climate that has a short foraging season already.
Second, i find it hard to believe anyone would down a hive because you’d lose lots of honey or dilute it so it’ll ferment, and also, you’d have to make a brand new skep which you know is hard work!
Lastly, if they harvest entire hives, how did they get the brood out of the comb? Have you ever smelled boiling water with brood comb in it? It’s truly awful. We have nice metal strainers and cheesecloth to separate the debris from the wax, but I still don’t use that wax myself except to create new frames.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.
Many thanks
Regarding prayers and charms against a swarm – perhaps those are for people who aren’t beekeepers and don’t want bees in their chimney/roof?
Regarding swarming. The sources for my article are as follows:
Alston, F, Skeps, Their History, Making And Use. 1987. Northern Bee Books. Hebden Bridge.
Jones, S., Skeps, tools and accessories. 2007. IBRA. Cardiff
Keys, J., A Treatise on the Breeding and Management of Bees. 1814. London
I think they are all out of print now – the last one certainly is.
There is the old saying: – a swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay, a swarm in June – a silver spoon and a swarm in July ain’t worth a fly – in other words for a skep beekeeper the earlier the swarm, the bigger the honey crop (probably).
As a beekeeper you will know that nothing encourages swarming like congestion – hence the skep size thing to bring it on early. Keys also mentions feeding the bees in the spring to push things along.
Regarding getting the honey. They didn’t used to drown the bees – they would either ‘drive’ them up into a fresh skep by drumming or stupefy them with the fumes from smouldering pieces of dried puffballs. According to Keys, the bees would recover from stupefaction after 10 minutes or so and go about their business. He also says this is not the case with driving – after this the bees are bad tempered for 3-4 days.
A Youtube search for “heathland beekeeping Douglas Zeringue” will find a series of very informative videos of skep beekeeping in Germany including swarm catching and harvesting the honey.