Skep

Definition

Light, warm, cheap and effective at keeping bees, and impossible to open. Harvesting usually meant killing the colony over a sulphur pit and cutting out the comb, which is why autumn in a skep apiary involved selecting which colonies to destroy. Skeps persisted into the twentieth century and are still occasionally used for heather honey, because one is light enough to carry onto a moor.

Where the word gets used loosely

Skep beekeeping is often romanticised. It was effective husbandry with a genuinely brutal harvest, and its replacement was an improvement for the bees as much as for the beekeeper.

Guide records that discuss this

• How honey was produced before modern beekeepingFor most of human history, taking honey meant destroying the colony. The movable frame is barely 175 years old, and everything before it was a compromise between getting the honey and keeping the bees.