Beehive

Beehive

Two examples of vertical beehives made from tree trunks, approximately 70 cm in height. One is rectangular, while the other is cylindrical. They have lids. The rectangular one is made from wooden planks, while the cylindrical one is made from the tree trunk itself.

Unknown

Carmen Pérez Maestro

Spanish

Physical Object

945

Truébano/Colmena

https://www.abejaspaisajeculturalasturias.org/que-buscamos/colmenas/

cm x cm x cm

current,43.2038384146373,-5.39500544539384;

Spain

Wood

woodwork

Unknown

Beekeeping museum, Tanes, Asturias, Spain

Unknown

For the manufacture of the trobo, truébano and wooden hive box, logs that were fairly dry and hollow were selected, as they were easier to bore out and hollow using a gouge. In Asturias, chestnut wood was preferred, although examples can also be found in oak, elm, ash, and other woods. Their dimensions generally range from 60 to 120 cm in length and around 50 cm in diameter, with the trunk walls left at an approximate thickness of 5 cm, providing insulation against both cold and external heat.

Beehive

Personal use

Unknown

In traditional Asturian beekeeping, the basic unit of the apiary is the ‘trobo’ (from the Latin dolium, meaning vessel), a name used across most of the Astur-Leonese area; it is also known as ‘truébano’ in regions closer to Cantabria. Inside the trobos, one or two crosses made of thin sticks (rockrose, poplar, heather, etc.) were placed. These, known as justres, are where the bees begin to build their combs, in which they rear brood and store pollen and honey. These combs are not straight, as in modern hives, but take on a variety of shapes and sizes and cannot be removed without breaking. The crosses, or justres, also determined how much comb and honey the beekeeper could harvest, leaving the remainder for the bees to survive the winter.

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