The hive is placed well above ground level (optimal for bees – they never choose to create a hive on the ground). In brief, the Sun Hive has an upside down skep hive at its base with curving frames in the top section and no frames in the bottom section. The main thing I love about this hive and the enthusiasm surrounding it is not the hive itself, but the philosophy behind it, that of apicentric beekeeping. The Sun Hive is modeled in part on the traditional European skep hive, and is aimed at creating a hive that maximises colony health. They’re part of the world-wide movement towards ‘apicentric’ beekeeping – beekeeping that prioritizes honeybees firstly as pollinators, with honey production being a secondary goal.
Un Hives are a hive design coming out of Germany and now gathering interest in Britain. The Sun Hive: experimental Natural Beekeeping The Sun Hive is therefore an intermediate form between a fixed-comb hive and one with a movable comb system.” On the one hand, the new skep we have developed allows the bee to live its life in a way that accords with its being, and on the other hand the system of movable combs offers the beekeeper the means of laying hand to the hive and taking any appropriate action that may be necessary. These latter forces act subtly in a generally therapeutic way on the living organism that is the colony, but they must be supplemented by methods of animal husbandry that abandon some of the old customs and replace them with new ones. Our attempts have therefore been directed at counteracting the debilitation of the bees’ vital forces by means of those stabilising forces that are inherent in form.
We can be sure, however, that one of these reasons is the fact that the creature, as a physical and ethereal entity, can no longer live its life as it is meant to. There are many reasons for bees’ present-day afflictions.
#Sun spotter neale monks free#
“The impetus for its development came from the need to free the bees from a principle at once earthbound and cuboid, one that goes against every law of form – we are dealing here with laws that are particular expressions of a creature’s life. In the introduction to his book “The Sun Hive” he says: The hive was designed by German sculptor, Guenther Mancke, and represents the fruits of many years of research into the nature of the honeybee colony. The shape of the hive harmonises with the movement gesture of the bee colony and enables the bees to design their brood nests according to their own innate criteria. The bees are thus in their aerial realm and fly above the heads of passing onlookers. Made from an ingenious combination of skep baskets woven from rye straw with wooden support structures, the Sun Hive is intended to be installed at a height of at least 2.5 metres (8 feet). Although one may be favoured with some surplus honey from time to time, honey ‘production’ is not the main purpose of the hive.
Based on the principles of bee-centred apiculture, the Sun Hive is an ideal conservation hive for our pollinating friends the honeybee. The Sun Hive ( Weissenseifener Haengekorb) is a key element of the Natural Beekeeping Trust’s commitment to bee guardianship. This results in healthy bees and delicious raw honey! Natural beekeeping is a gentler bee-friendly approach that prioritizes care for the bees, allowing them to build natural honey comb and to harvest only when sufficient honey is available. Modern conventional beekeeping and agricultural practices, such as crop spraying, hive movement, frequent hive inspections, artificial queen rearing programs, routine medication, and sugar water feeding, reduce the vitality and weaken the immunity of the honeybees. Rather than treating bees as ‘honey production units’, the natural beekeeping philosophy is about providing optimal conditions for the health of the honeybee colony.
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