Skep Beehive
The skep preceded the modern hive. For hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years man has been keeping bees in containers. Sometimes a hollow log or a clay pot but often they were made from reeds or vines. They look much like a piled coil of rope.
This type of hive had a number of disadvantages. The beekeeper would catch swarms which came from his own hives and so increase the total number of hives. At the end of the summer it was necessary to kill the bees to harvest the honey, so half of the colonies would be killed and half left for next year.
This had the effect that by a similar process to natural selection the propensity of the bees to swarm was increase which was a desirable trait if you want to increase the number of colonies you have.
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