The Sun Hive

The Sun Hive (Weissenseifener Haengekorb) is a key element of the Natural Beekeeping Trust's and

Beekeepers in Prinzessinnengarten commitment to bee guardianship. Based on the principles of bee-

centred apiculture, the Sun Hive is an ideal conservation hive for our pollinating friends the honeybee.

Although one may be favoured with some suplus honey from time to time, honey 'production' is not the

main purpose of the hive.

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). The bees

are thus in their aerial realm and fly above the heads of passing onlookers. 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 hive was designed by German sculptor, Guenther Mancke, and represents the fruits of many years

of research into the nature of the honeybee colony. In the introduction to his book "The Sun Hive" he

says:

"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. There are many reasons for bees' present-day afflictions. 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. 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. 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. 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. The Sun Hive is therefore an intermediate form between a fixed-comb hive

and one with a movable comb system."

More information:

http://www.mellifera.de

http://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/sun-hive-introduction