I am now a beekeeper. With the help of my husband Kirk at the table saw, I assembled my own beehive and helped two friends assemble theirs.
We built Warre hives, designed by Frenchman Abbe Emile Warre (1867-1951.) Warre spent decades studying each existing beehive design. He evaluated which parts of each design were efficient and which were not. He kept a journal of his findings.
More importantly, he kept an open mind about hive design and focused on the well-being of the bees as a means to get the most honey. Warre understood that he was not a bee, he could not direct the bees about the best way to make honey. He could, however, be a honey facilitator by paying attention to the bees' process of making honey and designing a hive for the bees.
Warre also observed something about people: unlike the days of his childhood in France when everyone had hives of their own, ordinary people rarely kept beehives as a means to produce their own honey. "Modern" commercial hives, supposedly designed to heighten production, had become more time-consuming to maintain and less user-friendly. People had stopped owning their own hives.
Warre sought to design a hive that any person could easily maintain, but a design that was the most natural for the honeybees. In designing "The People's Hive" he was going for the win-win.
And so the answer to all Warre's design questions centered around studying the bees themselves: what structure helped the bees to construct their own honeycombs, move around within the hive, reproduce, store more honey, stay warm through Winter and survive into Spring. Unlike mass-produced commercial hives that were based on the needs of the beekeeper, studying the essential needs of the bees was the cornerstone of Warre's beehive design. However, bee-friendly hives also made beekeeping easier and more people-friendly!
Commercial hives need frequent monitoring by the beekeeper. The People's Hive allows bees to work with little or no interruption between Spring and the Fall harvest. Less disruption to honeybees is crucial to productivity because every interruption and disturbance causes honeybees to panic and gorge themselves on their own honey to survive. Undisturbed and trusted as the honey-making experts, bees have no need to stop (and actually reverse) honey production. Minimal-maintenance hives allow beekeepers to focus on other issues - like marketing honey.
As an Artist, I can relate to the effect of my workspace on my ability to Create. Of course, Artists are not bees. I have never gorged on my own artwork (but I have been too distracted to get into a productive, innovative Creative Flow.) I love this workspace design analogy -- and especially the fact that Warre respected honeybees' natural instincts enough to design Beehives around the essential needs of BEES!
In Nature, as in all things, Good Design always accomplishes the win-win.
