Once again, I find myself gloriously behind the times. In this particular case, a few thousand years behind the times. I built and maintain a wall beehive — a colony housed in the wall of my bedroom.
I have been calling it my Observation Hive because it has a plexiglas cover on the inside wall, but our ancient ancestors have been keeping such hives, called walled hives, for millennia. I know this now because of a fascinating Bee World article from 1998 by Eva Crane that details wall hives and wall hive beekeeping in some twenty warm-temperate Old World countries, a practice that dates back to at least 60 CE.
Indoor bees. They smell great, they sing me to sleep, and they teach me something new every day.
My beekeeping friend Jenne Johnson is great at finding and sharing such wonderful bee morsels as she wanders along the good bee road, and she managed to find this historical reference to my very new activity.
Dreaming of living with bees
For the past few years, I have dreamed of living with bees closer than my yard. I imagined and tried out a few ghastly attempts at indoor colonies with bees who were failing, and continued to fail when I brought them indoors. I call this my “bee hospice phase.”
Then I got the notion to simply put them in my walls, an idea probably sparked by my obsession with my friend Jacqueline’s wall hive that has been living in the brick walls of her hallway for more years than she remembers. Her hive has no inside access or viewport, but you can hear the bees humming through the wood paneling.
Indoor beehive installation
So, last winter, I had two young carpenters cut out the sheetrock and the insulation between two framing studs in my bedroom wall by the window. They added an inch-wide hole for a three-inch length of bamboo on the outside of the wall which the bees could use for an outside entry/exit.
Randy and Todd cut up…
Inside, the fellows cleaned the cavity down to its original 1930s wood and shingling. We added a piece of plexiglass with a small door at the bottom where I can feed the bees if needed. Over the plexiglass, I placed a light-proof, thick quilting so the bees can work in darkness and privacy.
An old tradition of indoor hives
Unbeknownst to me, I was following a tradition in place through all antiquity. Bees were regularly placed in house- and barn-walls throughout the ages with construction usually made of stone. Soft stone was carved out to make a hollow, which was often covered with a sheet of wood that would serve as a door to the hive. These doors were set either on the outside or inside wall of the house. It was noted in old writings that bees fared especially well in wall hives, probably owing to the better warmth in winter and the cool in summer of old stone, brick, or adobe-comb homes.
Before the bees came.
These wall hives were, on average, around 12-inches wide, 17-inches tall, and around 9-inches deep (the average wall thickness of dwellings in those times). Honey and wax for family use could be easily cut by opening the access door.
My Valentine hive (I name all my hives) is 11-inches wide, 54-inches tall, and 3.75-inches deep for a total volume of 36.5-liters. This size is one Tom Seeley recommends for hives as he has proven that small hives survive better on average than large ones.
After the bees took over the hive. There they are creating their new “body” about three weeks in.
Installing the bees
Like my unknown ancestors, I populated Valentine with a small cast swarm in spring 2018. I had captured an original swarm in a pillowcase and was hoping to “pour” the bees out through a small cut at the corner bottom of the pillowcase. Don’t try this. Ever. Bees do not like to be shaken off of fabric. They stick to it and won’t move for hours. Ask me how I know this. No, actually, don’t ask. The memory is too embarrassing.
I ended up housing that particular swarm in a large skep by slicing open the pillowcase and allowing the bees to spread out and march into the skep, which they did once they were exposed to the light of day.
Clearly, I would have to invent another way to invite bees into the wall. So, I took a small, slippery plastic bin, affixed to one end a plastic funnel with a bendable nozzle that happened to fit perfectly into the bamboo tube entrance, and waited for another swarm.
Queen Valentine gets very busy laying on the fresh new combs.
It worked like a charm, with bees marching into the hive two-by-two for the next four hours. Unfortunately, I was so mesmerized by the outside activity of the marching bees (whom I watched through a screen cut into the plastic bin) that I forgot all about what was going on inside.
Chaos in the house
Inside. Where I had forgotten to shut the bottom port of the hive. Inside, where about two thousand bees were floating around my room. They began congregating on my bedroom windows, which finally got my attention. I bolted into the house, opened my room door, and was greeted by thousands of curious and confused bees. Without thinking, my body took over. I shut the port and immediately hung small blankets over the upper windows. I opened the lower panes and pushed out the screens, turned off the room lights and ran back outside again to check on the bees still in entering mode.
I’d secured the bin by ropes so that I didn’t have to hold it in the air for hours. I was really not needed out there, and I certainly was not needed inside, so I sat down on my patio and held my head in my hands. After giving myself a painful mental lashing for the depths of my stupidity, I walked slowly back to the house, running over in my mind possible ways to escort thousands of bees from my room.
But, bless them, they’d done it all for me. When I slipped back into the room, nary a bee remained. They had no interest in my room and had quickly departed. They reassembled on the outside wall, near the hive entrance, waiting their turn to enter.
A busy hive in winter
I’ve since learned that in some countries, people actually have open hives hanging in corners of their rooms, with small curtains the only barrier between the family and the bee family.
The day after Valentine entered her hive, she came back out, hung around, then went back inside. During hot days this past summer, she did this a lot!
For the rest of the summer, I have had my windows opened and unscreened, and the Valentine bees—whose outside entrance/exit tube is only inches from the window, have flown in and out. One day, soon after they began constructing comb, I watched a host of bees fly slowly into my bedroom window to orient themselves at the inside wall of the hive. Then, they departed and quietly as they had come.
As autumn unfolds, Valentine is my busiest colony. She has built out the entire hive body with combs that reach the full length of the enclosure, to a depth of three combs. I have many tales of what Valentine has taught me these few brief months, but I’ll save those for another time.
Valentine today: Full, busy, and ready for a good winter.
For now, it feels good to know that behind me stand centuries of bee-lovers who have had the joy of listening to the hymns of bees far into the night and smelled the intoxicating aroma of honey and propolis waft out across the room before the dawn light begins.
11 Comments
I’m curious. Do you harvest or treat for mites? I’m wondering how?
Dennis
Hi Dennis: You have asked me the most common question I get about Wall-hives or skeps (straw hives). Now, because you’ve asked, I’ll tell you the assumptions I’ve made about you: 1)you are familiar with Langstroth hives, frames, and foundation. 2)you believe inspections and treatment are a part of good beekeeping.
Dennis, my management style IS my treatment: I keep very small hives that swarm frequently (most of the six hives in my yard swarm 3-5 times each summer.) Swarming is a wonderful mite treatment. I keep few hives, and I keep them separated to minimize drift between hives. I never enter a hive from the top (which releases the medicinal hive-air bees create as their secondary, external immune system. I only go into a hive from the bottom. And I mostly never go in. Inspections unsettle a hive for many days as they try to repair what your “efforts” have wrought. My hives are all heavily insulated winter and summer, so none of my bees are busy full time managing heat and cold. I don’t feed sugar–ever. Sugar is hard on the honeybee gut, and the gut is the most sensitive, vulnerable aspect of the honeybee.
Bees kept this way rarely suffer any of the common bee diseases save for varroa problems, and my management/treatment style enables my bees to focus their efforts on hygiene, which bees will do when give the time.
If I need honey for my family, I can get it by placing a ball jar atop one of my skeps and the bees will supply me. I don’t harvest or inspect Valentine hive, but honestly, since I can see her full comb face, what more inspection would one need??
Our organization’s beekeeping style is explained in more detail at our website, preservationbeekeeping.com. I know what I’ve written here flies in the face of all the “common knowledge” about bees, but that common knowledge is what has put our honeybees on the precipice of total collapse. I believe–cross my heart and hope to die–that the biggest dangers faced by bees are beekeepers doing conventional practice. If you look for other of my articles in this blog, you’ll see I’m taking a completely different (and easier, cheaper, and more bee friendly…) approach to beeing!
Wow, excellent idea and article for beekeeping/ winter hive tecniques!
I’ve only seen this in outdoor nests built by mother nature.
Lyss
Hi, I love your answer to Dennis’s question. I too am doing treatment free Beekeeping, for all the reasons you stated. The bees had been living for thousands of years without human intervention, when us humans started keeping and trying to manage them, that was when the bees started having problems. Thank you.
Yes, Debbie: Bees on their own are fine. It would seem that all species on their own are fine. We have a remarkable ability to take the exquisite and destroy it. I believe Earth may be getting tired of us! A bee friend of mine says, “I was a beekeeper once, and the bees have forgiven me.”
[…] put, the practice is called “wall beekeeping,” and people like Susan Chernak McElroy are all about […]
You have solved my problem. When I move I will build hives into every construction . House, hen house, rabbit house. At present i have
One hive of bees that do not sting and am in the process of building more. I propose to
build house etc in the center of the garden so that the bee’s can pollinate the plants from a central point. Arthur in Paraguay
Very Interesting article. At one time our then “Tax Man” had bees living in his home in Pinedale, Al. He brought then with him when he relocated to Trussville, Al. It seems Mr. Haskew was a Man Ahead of His Times.
However, I don’t think it would feasible for many Folks to have bees inside their home; especially if they have a lot of visitors. Many People are allergic to bees for many different reasons. The high cost of the Epi Pen had made it almost impossible for “regular” Folks to keep bees.
My Husband has been around bees all his life. Currently, we have 5 hives but he has shad upwards of 12 – 15. We will continue to keep them for as long as we are able to manage the work load it takes. I am glad there is more focus on keeping bees and I appreciate all those who choose to do so.
Thank you for these lovely and inspiring words. Could you explain “I can get it by placing a ball jar atop one of my skeps and the bees will supply me?”
Hi
this is awesome, but…..
Isn’t it to close to a building, or house?
There are some regulations about were to place bees
I want to know how to find a local person to build me an indoor beehive. How do I find this?