Skep on Stage
A large skep has been requested for a production of "Humble Boy" in Hertford.
I have made a skep, complete with hackle to fit the "conical" description in the script.
It is a central feature of the stage set which is a garden.
Details of time and place of performances to follow.
Keeping bees in skeps.
These days very few people keep bees in skeps because it is far easier to inspect and care for bees on movable frames in stanardised boxes, and because removing honey can be so destructive. There are even a few places where it is illegal to keep bees on fixed combs because of the difficulty of disease monitoring and control.
Pictures of skeps and, below, an article about making them.
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A group of my skeps. |
| Odd ones out in the picture above are the cat basket, rear right, and the eke in the centre, used for adding height to a full skep. Next to the eke is an unfunished skep, see below. | |
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A part made skep showing the straw wreath with its cowhorn gauge, the needle for making sewing holes, and the bramble strip used to bind it all. |
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Detail to show the way the stitches each go through the one in the previous row. |
| My skeps are made with bramble strips rather than the commoner cane most makers use. The straw is wheat grown for thatching. To make a skep with materials like string is a waste of effort as it will never last as long as a properly made one, and will not be as strong. A well made skep will bear the weight of a man standing on it without damage. | |
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White new comb made by a swarm that spent a day in this 17th Century replica skep before being put in a modern hive. The cross sticks are rose briars put in to give support to combs built in the centre space. |
| Some 19th Century skeps were made with large holes in the top so that they could be "storified". This was done to give the bees extra space to build and the hope was that the top skep would be filled with honey. A stopper filled the uppermost hole. | |
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Notice that the bottom skep is made in the opposite direction to the top two. It's quite hard to be sure which direction you will find yourself working when you start a new skep from just a handful of straw. The spiral may go either way round, and from outside the near edge or inside the opposite edge! |
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The entrance can be under the bottom edge or, as in this case. an upper entrance cut through the wall. Either way seems equally good for the bees. |
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A close-up of the cat basket. The construction is similar to that of an Orkney Chair, with the wreath reversing direction repeatedly instead of continuing a long spiral. |
A skep with comb and the bees that built it.
The gap is where a dish of syrup once stood to feed the bees when they were first put in the skep. The older combs are dark in colour, the new are pale. The rim of the skep has been varnished with propolis by the bees.
The skep has been turned almost upside down so that you can see inside.
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The following article was written for a beekeepers' magazine. Feel free to copy and use it.
Download button at foot of page.
Skepmaking
Getting started
Having kept bees for about 28 years now, my interest has gradually shifted around the different aspects of the craft. I have long since got over the eagerness to bottle as much honey as possible and sell it at every fete. My keenness to make candles has lessened and I have tried every job in my local association (except Treasurer!). The interest in the bees themselves has stayed with me, and judging honey shows is always interesting, but one aspect of beekeeping has taken over a large slice of my time.
How I started Skep making
Taking children on camping holidays after I retired from teaching I one time found myself camping in south Wales helping people who were busy creating a 17th century farm (You may have seen TV programmes about living a year in17th century style - made there and showing various things I have had a hand in). As I was the only beekeeper in the company this led to me making a couple of skeps to fit in the boles built into the farmhouse garden wall. I had never made a skep before but lack of experience has never stopped me trying something new.
A Little History
Back in the 1640s there was no cane or special straw to be had at the craft shop – you had to find the materials yourself. I visited my local thatcher Martin Wilmott who grows his own tall wheat, I read the booklets on skep making written by George Hawthorne and Karl Showler, I also read the accounts written 350 years ago to know what a skep looked like in those days. I visited my friend Ian Beaty who has made many beautiful skeps, picked up some good hints, sorted Martin’s thatching straw to get it ready for work, made myself the few tools that were needed and then I set about my own version. My first two skeps were knobbly bumpy things – probably quite like what a farmer might have made at home all those years ago. I taught myself to strip and split brambles to make the binding. For straw I’ve also used rye and even (free) wild oats.
Bramble for Binding
Splitting bramble is a steady job. Wear gloves! In winter, walk the hedges and look for long straight brambles that have no branches. Cut them at the base, pulling them upwards out of the hedge, and then run them through the holes in an old spanner to break off all the thorns quickly. Next scrape the bark and outer layers off using your pocket knife. Starting at the base, split the stem in half with the knife. Start with a cut, but from then on twist the knife to extend the split. The way to keep straight is to always push against the side that is getting thicker, which makes the split veer back towards the centre. Then split the halves into quarters. If you have ever used a froe to split timber, this is the same idea on a small scale. By the way, don’t bother trying to split bramble with a cleave – it works fine on willow for baskets but bramble is far more awkward to handle. Lastly, scrape the pith off the quarter stems, producing long flat tough woody strips about 5mm wide. These will be a bit too stiff to use, so have a short stick or the handle of your knife and run them over it like a belt over a pulley – inside in always – which will make them much more flexible. I wind each strip into a circle and hang them up to dry until I need them. A long walk with the dog usually results in just four bramble strips. You’ll need about 60 for a skep, so start collecting.
Extra Tools for Bramble
The scraping and flexing is rather hard on the hands, so I have recently added a couple of invented tools to my kit. The first is a scraper. It’s a short thick stick, about 25cm x 2cm, with two short nails close together halfway along. The idea is to put your pocket knife blade between the nails, which keep it upright, grip knife handle and stick together, and pull the quarter bramble through between stick and blade. It works even better when the stick is gouged out to accommodate the knife handle and allow the blade to lie flush against the other half. My second tool is a stout hazel rod cut to about 15cm long, and then cut endwise to give four stumpy “fingers” at one end. Trimmed to fit, these bend the scraped bramble nicely when it is threaded in and pulled through. It saves wear and tear on the hands.
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Bending a strip of bramble. The inner side is nearer the camera, on the inside of the bend. |
Skeps are made from the top down, but upside down! In other words, you begin with the middle of the bees’ roof. Starting a skep is the trickiest part. You have a bunch of straw in one hand and a strip of bramble in the other and have to conjure something in mid-air. Wind the bramble a few times round the straw, starting at the bases, and then twist the straw like the first turn of a snail shell. You now have the bramble in position to thread it through the centre and pull it tight. Have another go – you need several tries to get it right! The tuft of straw ends tells you which is the inside of the skep. Some work on the inside, some outside – it works the same. Just keep on the same way until the skep is complete. Once you have wrapped the straw round and threaded the bramble through a couple of times, the start of the structure is established and you can get down to the slow coiling that sews the skep together. Every stitch should go over the straw wreath and through one of the stitches of the previous row, so that the stitches all interlink in one continuous spiral knot.
The Skep Maker’s Basic Tools
Here you will need two essential tools, the two tools you cannot buy but must find or make for yourself. One is a short tube (cow horn? plastic bottle neck? serviette ring?) which holds the new straw together. It slides along and you poke in extra straw each time it gets loose, so that a continuous wreath of straw of the same thickness is fed into the skep wall. The second is also a tube (bird bone – mine are turkey and swan bones) cut on the slant so that you have a U shaped spike to push through the straw. This is your needle and makes a channel so that it is possible to slide the bramble through. I have found a 15cm piece of 15mm copper water pipe, suitably cut, filed, shaped and given a handle, is a better but less authentic tool. Sewing the continuous spiral So from here on just spike a hole, wrap the bramble round and through, pull it tight and repeat – about 500 times. Getting the smooth curve of a nice skep takes practice but you will easily make a usable basket at the first attempt. Joining new bits of bramble is done by doubling the ends together for a few inches and tucking the new one in to hide its end.
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Skep Tools
Clockwise : at 2,4,6,8,10 and 12 various horn, wood and plastic tubes and bottle necks used as gauges for the straw wreath |
Back in 1640 skeps were about 2 Winchester bushels in volume and a domed shape, widest at the base. It was soon suggested that narrowing the base slightly made stronger skep, and by the 19th century holes were sometimes left in the flat top so that skeps could be “storified”, like putting on supers. In 1770 Thomas Wildman proposed cylindrical skeps with wooden bars across the top to support combs. His idea was to stack them and remove the top one as it was filled with honey. This was about the first suggestion for working bees in replaceable parts of a hive, but did not catch on. I would not advise anyone to try keeping all their bees in skeps and probably only experienced beekeepers should try it at all. This is because fixed comb beekeeping poses a number of problems, from how to control swarming and how to get at the honey, to how to do effective disease control. There are places where skep beekeeping is illegal for just those reasons. Take pride in making your own skep for collecting swarms but leave it at that, unless, like me, you can persuade someone to pay you for demonstrating at craft shows or other beekeepers to buy your products. Making skeps has led me into wicker skeps and willow basketry, but that’s another story. Every hobby leads to another!
Recommended reading: “Skeps, Their History Making and Use” by Frank Alston. Reprinted by Northern Bee Books and well worth having, especially for Richard Alston’s excellent drawings. 1490 words.
Martin Buckle, 2005