Period Beehives: Wicker Skeps

A skep is an inverted basket made of wicker or coiled straw used in beekeeping for housing bees. The skep is over two thousand years old and straw hives are still used today in parts of Europe today. 

There are many examples of skeps in period illustrations and woodcuts. The word skep is derived from the word skeppa. It is Norse for a container and measurement for grain. It was not until the sixteenth century that this term was used with regards to beekeeping. Before that, the word “hive” was used.

The earliest known remains of a wicker skep were from 1-200AD. The example came from a peat bog near Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. Wicker and coiled straw basket techniques were known since Antiquity and could have been used as skeps then.

Wicker skeps, also referred to as an alveary, were woven on a whorl of thin branches of a spruce or fir tree. Dictionary.com defines a whorl as “a circular arrangement of like parts, such as leaves or flowers around a point on an axis.” The branches formed the main stakes. Other stakes were added for support as the diameter increased. Wicker skep size and shape is determined by the size and shape of the whorl used.

Wicker hives were daubed with cloam or cloom. Cloaming increases the weather resisting abilities of the hive. There are various recipes for cloam, but the main ingredients are sand, ashes, dung and lime. Straw skeps last longer than wicker. The cloam used to protect the hive adheres better to the straw. This led to straw hives replacing wicker hives in later years because of its ability to resist weather better.

A History of Honey and Its Use in Period: (Part 4 of 6): Tithes and Tolls

This is the fourth part in a series of entries on the use of honey in pre-1600's history.

Honey was also required as a tithe. St. Augustine Abbey monks in Canterbury were noted to be stringent on honey as a tithe. They wrote in their “Black Book” that “Honey must also be tithed” (Crane 1999, p490). Peasants in 1290 Schleswig-Holstein were required to pay a tithe from their beekeeping yields to the church.

Tolls were charged for moving honey into another town or across a bridge. For example, in the years 1080-1082, monks of St Aubin’s in Angers, France required tolls on items peddled by peasants in neighboring markets. Wax and hives were charged a half penny to transport. Charters of 1285 and 1412 in England list portage (tolls) charges on honey crossing Montford Bridge in Shropshire according to the number of tons, carts or jars (Crane 1999, p 491)

A History of Honey and Its Use in Period: (Part 3 of 6): Dues and Taxes

This is the third part in a series of entries on the use of honey in pre-1600's history.

Honey was used as payment of dues and taxes. In Medieval Wales, honey was a common payment for rent. “After Muslin Arabs conquered Spain in 711 AD, a list of dues payable in Murcia includes honey, wax and slaves paid half as much as other” (Crane 1999, 490). Around the same time in Ireland, if a bee stung a man, the owner of the bee had to give him, “a man’s full meal of honey”. (Crane 1999, p490) In England, under the law of King Ine of Wessex, the annual rent for ten hides of land was ten vats of honey. One hide of land would support a free family and its dependents.

Charlemagne refers to dues paid in mead, wax, and honey in his Capitulaire de Villis. In Poland, serfs who owned hives had to pay dues. Owners of upright log hives paid in liquid honey. Those who owned horizontal log hives paid in comb honey. The Domesday Book, compiled between 1087 and 1187, has many references to dues paid in honey, but not wax. This suggests that the dues were of a pre-Christian origin, as wax was required by the Church to make candles. (Fraser 1958, 21)