C O N T E X T 1 3 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 4 31 during the summer, the swarm having been given a good start to the season within the bee-house. Local hive makers Steele and Brodie were founded by Robert Steele in 1875. During the years until they finally closed in 1998 they manufactured and sold a range of wooden hives, including their own patented Wormit hive. Robert Steele’s interest in bee keeping began as an 11 year old in Fowlis Easter, Angus, when he was given a skep of bees by his aunt. He began designing and making wooden hives for sale when later he became an apprentice millwright in his father’s workshop. At that time the only other type of hive was an octagonal one made in Ayrshire (the Stewarton Hive). In 1876 at the first show of the Scottish Beekeepers Association in Dundee he exhibited his hive and won all the prizes. He eventually outgrew his father’s workshop and moved to Gauldry, Fife. In 1899 a fire destroyed the building and the business moved to new works built a couple of miles away in Wormit, where they remained until they closed in 1998. At one stage after the first world war they also made poultry houses and carried out general joinery work. However, a surge in interest in beekeeping between the wars meant that they soon returned to making hives only. The business was well located to serve the raspberry growers of Perthshire, Angus and Fife. After the second world war they alone remained in Scotland. TheWormit Bee-HiveWorks were demolished after being closed in 1998. Houses, called The Bee Hives, stand in their place. Apart from the name, a series of panels in the new brick wall provides a clue to the works’ part, with Tayfield bee-house, now Category B listed, in the history of bee-keeping in Scotland. Bibliography Bates, DF (1997) An Introduction to Bee-Houses Foster, AM (2010) Bee Boles and Bee Houses, Shire Thomson, J (1800) GeneralView of Agriculture in the County of Fife, J Moir, London Crane, E andWalker, P (2001) ‘Winter bee houses and cellars’, Local History Magazine, No 86; also published inBeekeepers Quarterly, No 68 (2002) Special thanks to Penny Walker and Richard Jones of the International Bee Research Association; Brian Nish, formerly of Steele and Brodie, now withThornes (Scotland); and Stephen Gillespie of the Tayfield Estate. Matthew Price is a planner (built heritage) with Fife Council. Workers outside the Steele and Brodie BeehiveWorks with theWormit hive Steele and Brodie’s WormitWorks during the company’s brief diversification after the second world war from making only bee-hives weather took the form of bee-boles built into south-facing walls. Bee-houses have always been popular in Germany and Eastern Europe, where winters are colder and temperatures drop below -20°C for weeks at a time. Even though winters may have been colder in the 1800s, it would not have been necessary to protect swarms indoors during the winter. The early straw or reed skeps were generally left in the bee-boles during the winter without any special protection, although in some cases they may have had simple shutters. At Tayfield there were no bee-boles and the skeps were free-standing, relying on straw ‘hackles’ to provide some protection from the rain, so a bee-house would have been of advantage.That said, its acquisition may simply have been a personal whim. Perhaps a bee-house was seen on a trip abroad and later ordered by catalogue. However, given the interests of the then head of the family, it seems more likely that it was much less casual acquisition. In England there are some magnificent examples of bee-houses. At Attingham Park in Shropshire there is even an example of one designed by the famous architect John Nash in around 1805 (Grade II listed). Another notable example, also listed Grade II, can be found at Hall Place, Hurley, near Maidenhead. Dating from the late 19th century, it was restored in 1976. But beehouses are by no means common, and certainly not in Scotland. In Scotland there have been mobile bee-houses on wheels, specially designed for the heather moors, although the Tayfield House example does not appear ever to have been mobile. Indeed the patentedWormit Hive, manufactured by Steele and Brodie, was specially designed with features which improved portability when transporting it to and from the Highland heather moors. Incidentally, Steele and Brodie’s catalogues show that they also sold the straw skeps until 1971 (a best-quality rye straw skep cost £4, plus postage), after which they disappear from the catalogue. From the spacing and width of the internal shelves it would appear that the Tayfield bee-house used straw skeps, although the modern wooden Langstroth style bee-hive with its many advantages effectively replaced the skep from the early 1850s.The slit dimensions would be sufficient (allowing for the removal of the build up of paint over the years) for the bees to enter and yet be narrow enough to deter mice. It is probable that the skeps were then taken out and positioned around the gardens
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