Are we trying to force a round peg into a square hole?

A straw sun hive, allows honey bees to be themselves and build a warmer egg-shaped home. Here’s how to make one.

When German sculptor Günter Mancke set out to design the sun hive – his impetus came from:

 “… the need to free the bees from a principle at once earthbound and cuboid, one that goes against every law of form – we are dealing here with laws that are particular expressions of a creature’s life. There are many reasons for bees’ present-day afflictions. We can be sure, however, that one of these reasons is that the creature, as a physical and ethereal entity can no longer live its life as it is meant to.” 

So his sun hive is egg shaped, like a giant queen cell in fact, with thick straw walls for warmth and no cold, damp corners. Essentially it is two skeps, clamped together above and below a central division board with an entrance at the bottom, over an ornate funnel-shaped landing board. It is intended to be hoisted 8ft into the air – the height that Tom Seeley has determined is the bees preferred residential height. 

But this is not just a large, airborne, double-decker skep. It has removable ‘frames’ so beekeepers can carry out some inspections if need be. It will also accept a feeder, a super and some varroa treatments too.

You can’t buy a Sun Hive so if you want one you have to make it yourself.  Full instructions can be found in – ‘The Sun Hive’ by Günter Mancke. Unfortuanately it is no longer available but it was published by the Natural Beekeeping Trust and they may be able to help you to source a copy or perhaps a course. Contact form here: https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/contact

Then came the Virus and with it, those sunny Lockdown days when we all had time to step aside from the real world for a while and do other things.  So we decided to make a Sun Hive.

There are lots of components to consider:

• Wooden parts; 
• Canvas hood;
• Skeps;
• Entrance Funnel;
• Siting and weathering.

1. Wooden Parts

At the heart of the sun hive are the nine comb arches. They stand astride the circular hole in the centre of the division board with their little, shaped feet in the arch-foot-recess. The bees hang up on the arches and draw their combs downwards through the central hole and into the lower skep. The arches and the attached combs are removable – with care and a prong to hang them on.

2. Canvas Hood

The arches are enclosed in a tailored, three-piece cover-cloth made of coarse canvas. The cover cloth has a dual purpose: 

• to prevent the bees from building comb between the tops of the arches and inside of the over-skep; 
• to encourage propolising.

The canvas cover is made up of three pieces cut to size and shaped to cover the hemispherical top of the arches. There are two pieces shaped rather like a very flared skirt with semi-circle cut out of the upper edge. Together they enfold the flanks leaving a circular aperture like a neck hole on top. This is covered with simple circle of canvas. The circle can be removed if a feeder or a super is to be added.

3. Skeps

There are two skeps:

• The over-skep sits on the division board enclosing the arches and canvas cover;
• The under-skep is pegged to the underside of the division board by four wooden pegs.

The two skeps are built around templates because their sizes and shapes are important. 

The over-skep houses the arches so the template is a simple hemisphere with diameter two bee-spaces bigger than the arches.

But the under-skep will house what are essentially wild combs drawn down free-style by the bees and suspended from the arches so the shape of under-skep-template is more complex. It is formed by attaching the ends of a chain to two points 36.5cm apart, on a vertically held sheet of plywood. The curve formed by the chain hanging under its own weight is called a ‘catenary’.  The shape is traced onto the plywood which can then be cut out.

The reason Günter Mancke gives for this requirement is that when bees are drawing wax, they hang in chains and the shapes they make under the influence of gravity are catenary curves.. 

The start of each skep is a straw rope stitched around a wooden ring. 

After a single lap, the wooden ring is then clamped onto the template and further laps are formed around the template.

4. Entrance

The wooden ring at the base of the under-skep is equipped to hold the entrance funnel which is essentially a decorative, woven landing board. The bees walk up the outside (not the inside) to an entrance which encircles the top of the funnel-neck housing inside the wooden ring. It’s held in place by wooden sticks, which go all the way through so the funnel will stay put whatever the weather. 

This funnel is a bit too long in the neck – aesthetically speaking – but the bees seem to like it. When they are very busy they sometimes tumble as they’re making their way up in a hurry but the flared skirt catches them nicely.

5.  Siting & Weathering

The sun hive book offers several suggestions on how and where to house a sun hive. Mostly they are rather elaborate gazebos with steps and thatch but allowing the sun hive to be hung up quite high and under cover.  A gazebo like this would need a lot of forethought, skill and possibly even planning permission. 

Alternatively there is a sort of high table, about a metre tall and the sun hive sits in the middle of it. In fact if you type ‘sun hive’ into Youtube you will find a video of a man in shorts, somewhere hot and sunny going through his bees. Or see below. His sun hive sits on just such a table but the entrance is quite close to the ground and the hive is out in the open.

Straw skeps do not weather well and will rot if exposed to wet weather so, here at the wet end of Europe, some sort of protection is essential. 

In days of yore, skeps were housed in purpose-built recesses known as ‘bee boles’.  Or they would be plastered with a stiff mortar of cow dung, hardened with gravelly dust and ashes (or lime) known as cloome or cloame.

Another alternative is a hackle which is a sort of thatch made from bundles of reeds or wheat straw, stitched together into a mat then curled around into a teepee shape.  A flower pot placed on the top will direct rainwater away from the centre.  A metal or willow ring sized to sit halfway down the cone-shape can be used to attach ropes and anchor the whole structure for the winter.

However, sometimes it’s better to be pragmatic so the sun hive goes into winter inside a WBC. The table seems to be enough to protect the  bottom half from the elements.

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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 19^th 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 20^th 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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However, the skep was reluctant 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.

Wintering Skeps

Having no built-in floor, skep hives were placed on either rush mats or hardwood platforms to keep out the cold and the damp. In addition they were often tucked into purpose-made alcoves in stone walls known as bee-boles which kept off the worst of the weather. 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. The molly-coddling of bees is nothing new!

For their part the bees would line the skeps with propolis, a mixture of waterproof natural gums with fragrant antimicrobial properties.

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Summer Management and Swarming

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 to encourage early swarming: ‘Let your hives be rather too little than too greate, for such are hurtful to the increase and prosperity of Bees’.

Swarming was further encouraged by careful choice of bees – the swarmier the better – with non-swarmers being eliminated.  So it seems likely that the skep beekeepers are at least partly to blame for the unreasonably strong swarming instincts still found in some strains of bees.

Honey Harvest

Throughout the summer, the beekeeper would catch and hive swarms in vacant skeps, then at the end of the season he would select the heaviest and the lightest of his stocks for the honey harvest – the reason being that the big ones had the most honey while the light ones would be on the weak side and unlikely to survive the winter. The honey harvest involved either plunging bees and skep into water to drown them or placing them over a hole in the ground containing either an arrangement of smouldering brimstone-impregnated papers or hot coals over which the beekeeper would sprinkle ‘flowers of sulphur’ at the appropriate moment in order to smother the bees. An alternative was to burn slices of dried puff ball (!) which would stupefy the bees.  They could then be shaken out and the honeycombs removed. The remaining mid-weight hives were taken through the winter for the following year.

Advances

This was skep beekeeping at its simplest and it was practised for centuries but then as now, beekeepers were fond of their bees and less destructive methods were sought.

Not to mention the detrimental effects of plunging honeycombs into water or exposing them to sulphurous fumes!

Driving Bees

One such 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 or other suitably sturdy receptacle. An empty skep was then set at an angle to the open end of the upturned skep, in line with the direction of the combs, and fixed firmly in place with skewers called driving irons. The whole arrangement was then covered with a cloth and the sides of the full skep vigorously drummed. The theory was that the noise and vibration would drive the bees up out of the full skep and into the empty one leaving the combs of honey behind. The beekeeper could then either take some or all of the honey.

If he chose to take only some then he could return the bees to their original skep and they stood a good chance of surviving the winter. Alternatively he could take the lot and unite the bees with another stock.

Skep Research and Development

Over the years, after much study and consideration, certain refinements in equipment evolved such as caps, supers, ekes and nadirs.

In tandem with these came beekeeping systems. One system was to start a May swarm of bees in a large skep with an aperture in the top covered with a straw mat. When the bees had filled this, another similar skep with an open aperture was placed beneath – this was the nadir. Soon the flying bees would be hanging down through the aperture into the nadir where they would begin to draw comb. Eventually the queen would descend and begin to lay there while the top skep would fill with honey. If a strong flow persisted, the straw mat could be removed and a cap, a small skep without an aperture, could be put on the top.

Another system was to start a May swarm as above but when the bees had the skep filled, an eke or ring of straw about four coils high was placed beneath to give more space for the bees to extend their brood comb while a cap was placed above the aperture over a piece of queen excluder. In the event of a strong flow, another skep with an aperture could be placed beneath the cap and over the excluder. All these additions could end in quite wobbly towers so each layer would have been held in place with a couple of strategically placed stitches.

From theory to practice

Given the length of time that beekeepers kept bees in skeps and their reluctance to change to the wooden hives, even given what seem to be obvious advantages of same, they must have had their successes. It would be an interesting experiment to put a swarm into a skep or skeps for the summer to try out one of the systems above. There’s a place in the garden where a weatherproof, if scruffy, bee bole can be easily constructed so all that is needed is to make a suitable skep or two and look out for a nice swarm of bees – if you find a nice big one in early May and don’t know what to do with it….

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Materials

1. The hive you are going to put the swarm into, equipped with at least 2 frames of stores and 2 drawn frames – the rest can be foundation
2. A rapid feeder – Ashforth or Miller type
3. Strong syrup
4. A spare brood box.

Method

At this point I’m going to assume your skep is face down on the ground, or on a sheet like the one in the photo above but with the swarm hanging up inside it.

• Do this at dusk or late in the afternoon
• Set up your hive floor on the stand where you want the swarm to live;
• Gently turn your skep upside down and set it quietly on the floor inside the spare, empty brood box thus:

• Get your other brood box and set it on top of the box with the skep in it;
• Set the rapid feeder on top, fill with strong syrup and prime it ie slop an amount over the feeder rim onto the frames below;
• Put the roof on;
• Walk away;
• During the night, as long as they have a queen with them, the bees will walk up out of the skep and by morning will have occupied the frames and be taking down syrup;
• If your swarm is absolutely huge – it might take a bit longer.

Next day remove the empty skep and the spare brood box.

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Click here for instructions on How to make your own Skep

Click each photo for a close up.

Cut the old cane so there is just enough left to tuck into the coil – see black line.

Push the business-end of the new cane under the last of the old cane (1). Push the tail-end of the new cane under the adjacent stitch on the previous coil (2). Let’s call this the ‘anchor stitch’.

Fold about an inch of the tail-end back on itself and tuck it as far as it will go under the last stitch and into the top coil.

Thrust your bodkin, gimlet or marlin spike diagonally under the anchor stitch thus.

Push the business end of your new cane where your bodkin was and pull it tight. This is the first stitch of new cane – it should enclose the last of the old cane and pull the tip out of sight under the aforementioned anchor stitch.

You may need your long-nosed pliers to align the two layers of cane here and get the tip to go properly home.

Here’s a little heather (Calluna vulgaris) skep – the joins are barely visible on the outside…

… but just visible on the inside.

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Materials

There are two categories of materials:

• the coil of rope forming the body;
• the binding holding it in place.

A variety of different materials can be used for each, depending on what is readily available – selection  below. Click image for close up.

The Rope

The rope can be straw, grass, rush and even heather – almost anything fibrous which is relatively long, tough and flexible can be used. Some materials are more durable than others and generally, the tougher the material the more difficult it will be to work.

Oat straw makes a good lightweight skep and was the most commonly used material in this far flung corner.  Wheat or barley straw will also suffice you just need to find some with nice long stems.

Rushes such as the common soft rush Juncus effusus are soft and easy to work with but the central pith will take up atmospheric moisture and the skep will soon rot.

Purple moor grass, Molinia caerulea, is an exceptionally tough and durable upland grass found throughout Britain and Ireland and used for skep making in Scotland. There’s a lot of that around here so that’s what I started with. You can use either the leaves or the flowering stems and the plant obligingly sheds both in the autumn so you can go along and just pull it up by the handful. The leaves are nice and soft and easy to work but the flowering stems tend to be a bit brittle. They are easier worked if they are a little green when gathered but once dried no amount of soaking will de-brittle them enough to make them turn tight corners but they can be incorporated into the skep walls.

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The Binding

Whatever the chosen material for the rope, the binding would traditionally have been bramble or sometimes nettles.

Brambles aka blackberry or Rubus fruticosus were were traditionally used, probably because they grow almost everywhere and they are so tough but the preparation is labour-intensive: the fronds should be one year old growth and no older as the stems become woody and tough with age; these need to be cut in the late summer or early autumn and stripped of leaves and thorns before being split lengthways, de-pithed and stropped to improve their pliancy. Finally they can be hung somewhere cool and dry to season.

Nettles have their own problems.

There are modern alternatives. Jute or other hairy strings are convenient and cheap but their durability is variable and some sources suggest that the hairiness and the smell of oils used in their manufacture are irritating to the bees. Synthetic baling twine is the cheapest of all and can be used if you don’t mind blue (or orange) but it will degrade in sunlight and your skep may burst asunder at a vital moment.

Lapping or binding cane is a renewable rattan product from the Far East and is a reasonably priced alternative, there is little preparation and it comes in the post. If lapping cane is used, ideally it should be pre-soaked for several hours to increase its pliancy.

Tools

• A bodkin or marlin spike to pierce the rope;
• A section of cow horn or the neck of a plastic bottle to hold and funnel the material into a continuous rope of uniform thickness;
• Scissors;
• Tape measure;
• Long nosed pliers.

Method

The skep is begun from the centre with the inside of the basket towards you. Work progresses outwards in a flat spiral then gradually the coils are directed upwards to make the walls, finally tapering off at the rim.

The first and most difficult thing to do is to get started.

• First take a soaked length of lapping cane and form a simple knot and – holding it this way up with the long end to the left…

• Take 3 straws and, working with the thin ends lay them across the active length of cane (the one on the left) then bring the cane over and pass it through the loop trapping the straws thus;

• You need to stop now and think because the direction in which you start the binding is very important – once begun it cannot be changed. If you are right-handed you will probably load material into your rope from the left, leaving your right hand to do the stitching. The inside of the skep is facing you;

• Continue binding the straws to the centre by passing the cane though the centre each time and slightly overlapping the previous stitch until you have completed a full circuit and it should look someting like this from the inside…And like this from the outside… an eyelet with the smallest possible hole in the middle.

• You can now start catching the stitches of the previous coil and as you do so, you need to start adding straws – this time add them one at a time butt end first – push them into the middle of the others until they grip.

• With the scissors, trim the working end of the cane to a point and use the bodkin to ease a passage beneath a stitch then push the cane through. Pull tight and repeat, binding the coils to one another as they expand.

• Loading the rope is important. Keep loading one or two straws at a time, gradually building it up until it is thick enough to fit the horn or plastic guide. From then on it is important to maintain a snug fit in the guide by loading little and often. Do not allow the guide to become slack as this will introduce a weakness. Too tight and you’ll get a bulge.

• Give the rope a twist as you go and this will further tighten the structure;

• Click here to find out how to add a new length of binding

• As you progress away from the centre, the stitches will become further apart so you should add stitches periodically by tightly circling the rope once with the lapping cane between stitches and holding it tight until the next stitch locks it into place. If you are making your own skep the size is completely up to you but generally a swarm skep has an outer diameter of about 14” and height of 10” and will take about a day to make. Harking back to grain measures – a 15”x10” skep holds one peck, or a quarter bushel, while one of 14”x15” will hold about 2 pecks – half a bushel.  Which size you choose depends on your average swarm size – 1 peck or 2!

• Start the walls about 2” before you have reached the required base diameter because it will take a couple of laps to round the shoulder fully. Up until now you have been binding coils one to another in a flat disc but now you need to change the both alignment of the coils, one upon the other, and the positioning of the stitches. Remember you have the inside of the skep towards you.

• Finishing off is just a matter of finding the right place to stop so there isn’t a lop-sided look. Once that is decided, stop loading the rope but continue the stitching until the rope tapers off to a point then just tie off the end and thrust it out of sight.

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Strange name though: Purple Moor Grass- until you see a swathe of it on a summers day with a strong wind blowing across it, then there is a purple sheen to the green. It is a grass suitable for skepmaking because of the length of its leaves and because of its toughness. Another excellent quality is that it withdraws nutrients from leaves and stems at the end of summer then obligingly sheds the foliage for the winter.

Both the leaves and the tall flowering stems will make a good skep.

Leaves

The leaves (above)  are easier to work and make a softer skep but surprisingly strong so long as you get the rope nice and tight. Strong enough to bear my weight! Somebody told me once, “If you can’t stand on it, it ain’t a skep”, so I test them all now.

Flowering stems

The stems can be very tough and brittle whether you soak them or not and will not bend sufficient for the tight circuits demanded at the start. There are two solutions to that – either cut them at the end of summer when they are still green at the base or use the leaves to start with then start to feed the stems in later.  When using these you will need to either strip the seed-heads or snip them off beforehand.

Be a bit careful with these as the seeds can become parasitised by a fungus from the same family that causes ‘ergot of rye’ on rye, Claviceps microcephala. Read on…

Ergots

If C. microcephala is present, you’ll see some of the seeds will be enlarged, hard and grey – these are ergots.  A bit like wild rice or mouse droppings. Don’t eat them – they can cause miscarriage, hallucinations and death.

Here’s an ergot on Molinia – that black thing in the middle – click the photo below for a closer look:

Harvesting

When the long flowering stems are half bleached and still a little green at the base is a good time to cut them as they are quite dry but still pliant so go forth and get cutting.

If you prefer to use the leaves for your skep making, wait till they’re bleached but a bit green at the base.  Wind them around your hand and give them a good pull – if they come away they’re ready, if not – give them a bit longer.

Later in the year the leaves start to moult on their own but they can get very wet. Also the deer can trample the tussocks badly so don’t leave it too late into the winter.

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Origins

The word skep is thought to have come from an Icelandic Norse word skeppa meaning a straw basket and grain measure: their original purpose being a half-bushel grain measure, although Saxon beekeepers are thought to have been hiving bees in them since early Christian times. Skeps came to Britain when the Saxons surged westwards to occupy territories vacated by the Romans after their empire collapsed around 410 A.D. presumably reaching Ireland soon after.

 Before the arrival of the skep the only purpose-made hive was the alveary: a sharply conical willow or hazel basket weatherproofed with a layer of green cow manure and ashes or lime. The word alveary has Latin roots but despite the etymology there is no evidence that the alveary itself was a Roman invention and may well have been in use here before they came. Although eventually superseded by the skep, the process was gradual and the alveary was still being used by some beekeepers into the 19^th 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.

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