Skep Beehive

The skep preceded the modern hive. For hundreds, possibly thousands, of years guy has been keeping bees in bins. Occasionally a hollow wood or a clay cooking pot but frequently they were produced from reeds or vines. They look just like a piled coil of rope.

This can be a series of movies, that we think had been taken time ago, featuring an operation in lower Saxony. It’s interesting to see all of them mixing swarm, queens and all, then picking a queen for mass ‘vat’ of bees, including several scoops of bees the this new skep.

This sort of hive had some drawbacks. The beekeeper would capture swarms which came from his or her own hives and thus raise the final amount of hives. After the summertime it was required to eliminate the bees to harvest the honey, so half the colonies will be killed and half-left for next year.

This had the effect that by an equivalent procedure to natural choice the propensity associated with bees to swarm was boost that was a desirable characteristic should you want to increase the range colonies you have got.

As soon as the removable framework hive ended up being devised it made both assessment for infection therefore the harvesting of honey feasible without killing the colonies. This tendency to swarm happens to be unwanted since when swarms are not grabbed losing on moms and dad colony is considerable, therefore the possibility of a honey crop is less. The efforts of the work force is now able to go towards gathering nectar and storing even more honey which can be almost certainly going to produce a surplus, that the beekeeper can harvest.