Those containing honey, and not brood, could be removed without disrupting the colony, but Huber's hive design never really caught on. Wooden hive boxes became more common by the 18th century, leading to Francois Huber's moveable hive or "leaf hive," a vertical stack of moveable book-like leaves, each holding its own section of comb. So, beekeepers began looking for alternative hive designs. The use of a skep, unfortunately, still required the destruction of the hive, and often the death of the entire colony, to harvest the honey. A small hole near the bottom of the skep allowed the bees to come and go, and the comb was laid down inside.Įven though skeps are rarely used today outside of the developing world, the enduring image of the beehive – and of hardworking industry – is still a woven straw skep. Skeps look like overturned pots and were made from either baked clay or woven straw. To harvest the honey, the hive would be cleared of bees and destroyed, the comb squeezed to extract the golden goodness.Īround 2,000 years ago, beekeepers began using the first artificial beehives, called skeps. The first domesticated beehives were fashioned from the hollowed-out stumps of trees and fallen logs, which were natural destinations for swarming honeybee colonies. Aristotle wrote about beekeeping and bee behavior in his book "Historia Animalium," and the Chinese statesman and philosopher Fan Li explained the benefits of a wooden hive box in his treatise "Golden Rules of Business Success" circa 500 B.C.E.
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