| True cottage gardens developed out of the need to feed a hard-pressed working family with vegetables, fruit, herbs, honey from bee skeps and eggs from chickens. |
| Skeps — bell-shaped straw hives of the sort still popular in cartoons — were widely used in seventeenth-century Europe and were brought to the New World by some of the earliest colonists. |
| Unlike in skeps, this hive is designed for removing comb if the beekeeper wishes. |
| A dry stone wall in Glaisdale has the largest number of recesses in the country to house skeps or hives. |
| Skeps were used in Europe for the past 2,000 years and their popularity endured alongside a diversity of other hives. |
| Later raw baskets called skeps were used and then hives were invented. |
