30 C O N T E X T 1 3 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 4 While I was waiting to contact the estate to look inside the bee-house and ask what they knew about it, I managed to speak to a former employee of Steele and Brodie, bee-hive manufacturers, whose works used to be just down the road. I thought there might be a good chance that they knew something about the bee-house and that they may even have made it at their works, which would have been an interesting local connection. Checking through their archives, including past catalogues, there was unfortunately no reference to them ever having made this or any other bee-houses, although they made poultry sheds and general joinery work briefly after the first world war.TheTayfield Estate confirmed this.The bee-house had in fact arrived by boat, delivered to their nearby pier and ferry terminal in 1850. Unfortunately, no more was known. As far as anyone could remember it had always been in its present position located against the south-facing wall of the walled garden. Beekeeping in Scotland follows a long tradition. Before the reformation the monks at the Abbey of Aberbrothoc in Angus, for example, needed wax for their altar candles. Many of the abbey rents were paid in honey and wax. There is a description in 1678 of the considerable profit derived from the beehives in the district. The important role of bees in pollination, however, was not fully understood until after 1750, when it was explained by the Irishman Arthur Dobbs. After this, bees were increasingly placed near flowering fruit trees and bushes, and vegetables such as beans. John Thomson’s GeneralView of the Agriculture of the County of Fife: with observations on the means of its improvement, published in 1800, notes that, while honey was not being produced commercially, ‘in every garden of almost every gentleman, a few hives of bees are to be seen.’ Beekeeping was certainly not an unusual pastime when, just a few years before the bee-house arrived atTayfield,Tennyson had written in ‘Come Down, OMaid’ the much quoted lines: ‘The moan of doves in immemorial elms/ And murmuring of innumerable bees.’ Traditionally, additional shelter from the Scottish A traditional straw skep in a bee-bole in the walled garden of the National Trust for Scotland’s Kellie Castle Bottom right: A page from the 1938 Steel and Brodie catalogue, including skep items Top right:The cover of Steele and Brodie’s 1956 catalogue Decorative panels at the entrance to the new housing development where Steele and Brodie’s BeehiveWorks used to stand.The words on the bricks, taken from Horace, read:‘I, in the style and – Manner of the – Matinaean bee – By labour – Make verses
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