Period Beehives: Wood Hives, Part 2

Another period style of a wood hive is also Italian. Hive management and harvest are much clearer in these examples than other styles of wood hives. Harvesting and swarm catching can be seen in the picture above. It appears that harvesting is done from along the length of the hive. The swarm is being caught on the short side indicating an entrance on that end. Two hives can be seen behind the hive being harvested. This shows how hives are placed.

It is unclear in these images if there are hinges on either hive or if the panels are pinned in place. The hive must be closed up after inspection or harvest. The bees will only build in tight and dark spaces. The image directly above looks to be a beekeeper pulling a panel off. It also appears as though there is another hive stacked on top. This interpretation would necessitate the side panel opening. This would be possible if there were a space to slide a knife inside to separate the combs from the side panel. This could possibly do considerable damage to the combs though.

Period Hives: Wood Hives, Part 1

There is very little written about the medieval and Renaissance Italian box hives. We can tell from this picture that vertical and horizontal hives were used. It is my belief, based on the picture and beekeeping experience, the lids were removed and comb was retrieved as needed. I do not believe these were harvested in the manner of skeps. Skep harvesting involves killing the bees at the end of the season by means of drowning or sulfur smoke. I think that combs were cut out one piece at a time as needed.

Italy’s growing and beekeeping season is longer than that of Northern and Eastern Europe. Not unlike Florida, the bees would have a longer season of activity. The increased activity time would allow the bees to easily maintain their hives. This would also allow more time for the bees to recover from a harvest. There was no need to destroy the whole colony.

Period Beehives: Log Hives

A lesser known type of hive of the medieval and Renaissance time period is the log beehive. The log beehives are very common in North Eastern Europe. The log beehive is still used to this day in that region.

Bees made hives in hollow trees naturally. Early beekeepers would harvest this honey from the trees. Eventually they marked and claimed ownership of the trees and the hives contained therein. Beekeepers also started making their own cavities in hives. These types of hives were most common in the Northern Forest Zone of northeast Europe, which includes East Germany, Poland, as well as Northern Czechoslovakia and Russia. Larger logs were not usually available west of the deciduous forest zone.  There is no record of tree beekeeping found in the Scandinavian countries. It was probably too cold for hives to survive in the winter. (Crane 1999, 135)

Records of tree beekeeping exist from the 1200’s and 1300’s.  The Teutonic Order of Germany secured hereditary rights of bee trees in the 1253. Landowners started limiting the rights of tree beekeepers in the 1300’s. This included making new cavities in trees.   

Log hives were developed and hung in the trees to keep animals from foraging in them. Until 1600, forests were used for hunting and collecting honey and wax. The Thirty Years War of Germany (1618-1648) changed all that. Trees were felled and hives moved closer to the home and placed in collections called apiaries. The switch from tree cavity to log hive beekeeping was caused by a shortage of natural cavities. Trees were felled on land used for agriculture or other purposes. Landowners also prohibited new cavities from being made.

Log hives were often carved with faces and then later whole logs were carved into human form. (Crane 1999, 231) In 1568, Nikel Jacob advises to use poplar, lime, alder, and willow, but not oak wood for making the hives. In the Armbruster Collection of Germany, there are hives made from poplar, lime, oak, alder, beech, sycamore, pine, and spruce or fir. (Crane 1999 p 229) Nikel Jacob describes the hives as being 165 centimeters high by 60 centimeters in diameter. In the Armbruster Museum, examples are one-hundred fifty to two hundred centimeters high by sixty centimeters in diameter.

Two log hives have been excavated from bogs in Northern Germany. The first dates between 100-200 AD. It is one meter high and thirty-one to forty-four centimeters in diameter. There is a horizontal slit near the base for the flight hole. The flight hole is the hole or holes in a hive by which the bees come and go from the hive. The second hive dates between 400-500 AD. It is one meter high by thirty centimeters in diameter. There is a cover held on by wood pegs. The flight holes are at different levels on the hive.

Large logs might be divided into two colonies. The hives were hung from trees or kept on platforms to prevent pest infestation. Most had doors or access holes (Crane 1999, 229) Honey comb was removed from the bottom of a closed top log hive. The beekeeper would take all the honey early in the season or leave enough combs later in the season for winter. 

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

Medieval Pic: Hive picture from Northern Italy

Detail of a miniature of beehives with bees. Northern Italy. (Lombardy)

From the British Library

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 2 of 6): Honey Collection

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

Retrieving honey is the first step to its use. There were two ways to eat the honey, straight from the combs or strained. The simplest way to separate the honey from the comb is to break up the combs and squeeze each piece into a receptacle. The first honey that dripped out was referred to as “Run Honey”. Next, combs were put into a strainer, such as a bag of woven cotton or other natural fiber or a pottery vessel with holes on the sides. Pressing the combs through the strainer or bag made a second honey. This honey contained pollen and was bitter. It was kept separate from the first honey. Columella describes the process in Rome c. 50 AD[1]:

“Whatever be the number of Honey combs that are harvested, you should make the honey on the same day, while they are still warm. A wicker work basket or a bag rather loosely woven of fine withies in the shape of an inverted cone, like that through which wine is strained, is hung up in a dark place, and then the honey combs are heaped in one by one. But care must be taken that those parts of the waxen cells, which contain either young bees or dirty red matter [pollen?] are separated from them, for they have an ill flavour and corrupt the honey with their juice. Then, when the honey has been strained and has flowed down into the basin put underneath to catch it…the fragments of the honey-combs, which have remained in the bag, are handled again and the juice squeezed from them. What flows from them is honey of the second quality and is stored apart by itself by the more careful people.”

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[1] Although Columella is pre-period, he is referenced in period bee-keeping manuscripts such as Thomas Hill’s “A Profitable Instruction of the Perfect Ordering of Bees”, written in 1608.

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.

Annotated Bibliography: "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry"

• Tusser, Thomas. "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry". England. 1580. Reprinted Kessinger Publishing.

This is a primary source that focuses on husbandry of all animals. Each chapter is a month of the year. There is an abstract and more detail in the second half of the chapter. Suck topics as when to plant and harvest crops, how to deal with pests, and how to take care of animals are presented. Honey bees are featured in six of the twelves months. This is probably because beekeeping maintenance is repetitive once each phase starts. This is an easy read as it written in high English. The font has been updated to modern English as well.

Medieval Bee Yard Project

Medieval Bee Yard: Take 2... I won't be able to keep the bees in skeps because it is illegal. The combs need to be on moveable bars or frames to facilitate pest and disease management. I still want to make a couple of full-size skeps and build the associated shelter for them.

Instead, I'm going to build medieval Italian box hives. They are very similar to the Top Bar Hive I had before. I have very little documentation, so this will be a bit of a challenge. Bonus to the Italian hives over the skeps.... more honey!

A friend has been working on a Medieval garden in her yard. She is clearing space for me to build my bee shelter to place the skeps in. This may be a long-term project that will be set-up next Spring. I need to gather the materials to build the skeps as well as the shelter.

I'm going to use reclaimed pallets for the shelter. There's a paint company around the corner that always has free pallets available. I need to look through my pictures for the shelters and draw up plans. I'd like to use hand-forged nails and I think I have a local source for those.

I'd like to be able to make at least two skeps 100% using period tools and techniques. This will include making a cleave to strip bramble for the binder, neither of which I have done before. I have a horn girth and a turkey-bone awl. I'd like to make an awl from a goose or other animal that would have been available in period. I need to collect the straw as well. A friend has offered me all the weeds I want from her backyard in the country.