Skep Making Workshop

Wednesday, 06 October 2010 00:00

During our beginner’s bee-keeping course, a student emailed a web address (www.martinatnewton.com) to us, saying that it was an “excellent site” and that we should share it with the other students. I looked it up and saw that it was a site of a skep-maker who was also participated in a number of bee-keeping activities, i.e. judging and candle-making. It soon became apparent that he also gave workshops. Mike and I talked about it for a bit and finally said, why not? We scheduled a workshop with him for October 3rd 2010, which seemed like eons away at that point.

But time passes quickly and we are now happy to provide a full report of the event. We had only communicated with Martin Buckle through emails prior to the day so we didn’t know what to expect that Sunday morning when he got out of his straw-laden car. We shouldn’t have worried: Martin is a great guy and his calm presence seemed to reassure the students throughout the day.

Martin had prepared 15 “starters” – one for each student – which gave people a head-start on the activity. A starter is the where the top of the skep starts: a small circle where you begin weaving in the straw, encircling it with long pieces of rattan to tighten them together to the whole piece. A plastic bottle-top holds the straw together. You use a fid (see photo) to create a space in the previous row to insert the rattan through. It’s a lot like basket-weaving – well, it is a basket really! 

Martin had an example on hand of a skep made out of willow, it was gorgeous too. He also had an example of a bar-skep, which were used in ancient Greece (see photo). Martin also dressed up in a bee-keeping outfit used in the middle ages, copied from a painting (see photo) – it was spooky actually!

People caught on to the skep-making quickly. Though it is a slow process, it was strangely addictive and you just didn’t want to stop once you got started. We will soon be calling Martin to schedule a class for 2011!