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 6 of 6): The Decline of Honey and the Rise of Sugar

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

Honey retains its primary position until it was superseded by sugar cane from India. After returning from India in 325BC, Alexander the Greats Admiral Nearchus, brought word of the reed, which “gives honey without bees.” China was using this type of sugar by 200BC. Arabs prized sugar starting in the 700’s. They introduced its cultivation in Sicily, Cyprus, Morocco, and Spain. Until the 900’s and 1000’s, sugar was hardly known in Northern Europe.

Cane sugar was rare and expensive for the next few centuries. It was treated more as a spice, condiment or medicine and was considered dangerous in large amounts. Returning Crusaders in the 1100’s brought more information on the uses of sugar. It became a fashionable and expensive cooking ingredient. Sugar was not in common use until the 1700’s, but James Hart in 1633 declared “Sugar hath now succeeded honey”. According to Eva Crane’s “World History of Honey Hunting and Beekeeping” honey and sugar prices compare as follows. The prices are pence per pound:

YEAR	HONEY	SUGAR
1250	0.43	19
1350	0.57	20
1410	1.17	24
1460	1.13	14.3
1480	1.23	8.7
1530	1.64	6.8
1575	3.4	18
c. 1600	2.3-5.7	13-20

A History of Honey and Its use in Period: (Part 5 of 6): Trade, Exportation, and Importation

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

In Roman times, large quantities of honey were exported from Turdetania in Southern Spain. Ligurian people on the North-West coast of Italy carried their honey to Genoa. “Inhabitants of Carnic Alps exchange wax, honey, and other natural products for necessities of life” (Crane 1999, p491)

Honey and beeswax were traded out of Russia by the 900’s, along the trade route via the Neva and Volga to the Caspian Sea and then to Asia (Crane 1999, p 491) Beeswax was traded to Byzantium, Venice, and Genoa, before Christianity came to Russia in the 900’s (Galton 1971, p15) In 1555, Olaus Magnus reported that Europe exported much wax, but “honey they reserve to themselves in great supply.”

Spanish Arabs were important in the honey and sugar trades during the Muslim period (711AD-1492). In the 1500’s there were still Arab traders in Granada who specialized in buying honey from beekeepers. They would sell to merchants for use in the retail market.

Records survive of export and import of honey within Europe throughout the Middle Ages and following periods. After 989 AD, an Irish ship partially loaded with honey sailed to South Wales. ”Norse merchants maintained a brisk trade in Welsh slaves, horses, honey, malt, and wheat in exchange for Irish wines, furs,….butter, and coarse woolen cloth.” (Crane 1999, p491) Five Russian monasteries purchased several tons of honey each between the years of 1569 and 1599.

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)

August Quote - Driving of the Bees: Charles Butler, 1609

Driving the bees is part of the medieval process of harvesting honey. Skeps do not have frames that allow for easy inspection of the hive and harvesting the honey. Charles Butler recommends driving the bees rather than smoking them out with a sulfur fire.The smoke from the sulfur fire killed the bees and left a residue on the wax and in the honey.

Below is a quote from Charles Butler's "The Feminine Monarchie: Or a Treatis Concerning Bees and the Due Ordering of Them" published in 1609. He discusses how to drive the bees in order to harvest the honey.

“Around midsummer, early in the morning, invert the skep to be driven. Cover the mouth of the full skep with an empty one. Wrap the join with a cloth to seal the opening. Clap rhythmically on the sides of the full hive. The bees will walk to the other hive. After most of the bees have walked to the empty hive, place it where the first hive was. Bees that are coming back from flight will go in there.”  - Charles Butler

History of Honey and Its Use in Period: (Part 1 of 6): Introduction

This is the first in a series of entries on a brief history of honey and its use in pre-1600's history. 

Introduction:

Honey is an all natural food that has been produced by bees for over twenty million years. There is evidence that man has exploited honey for about ten-thousand years (Crane, 1980, pg 19). Bees and honey have been regarded as sacred objects for just as long as evidenced by cave paintings. The earliest known evidence of beekeeping, as opposed to honey-hunting, is 3,000 years old (Friedman, 2008). Honey was a staple in the Medieval and Renaissance household until sugar became cheaper.

Honey was an important staple in the Medieval and Renaissance household and economy. It had more uses than just food. It was used to barter with and make mead with. As sugar became more popular and cheaper to produce, honey became less and less important.