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Eco Beehive is a product of discovery
The Story Behind the Eco Beehive
The Eco Beehive isn’t just a product — it’s the result of over 40 years of research and discovery.
For decades, I’ve been studying how honeybees live in trees. But as with any serious research, there came a time when I needed a control — a stable environment to compare data and measure whether any changes I observed were real.
My “control” started out as a simple mock tree stump, built to mimic the conditions bees find in nature. Over the years, it evolved, taking on every feature that bees themselves proved to be important for a healthy, successful nest.
That process — guided not by human ideas of what bees should want, but by what bees themselves showed me they need — became the foundation of the Eco Beehive.
The Eco Beehive didn’t come from a workshop full of theories or beekeeper traditions.
It came from listening to the bees.
Through testing and observation, I’ve explored:
- Shape and form — how the physical design affects colony health
- Location and lure — what attracts bees naturally
- Beneficial bugs and mycelium — the hidden helpers inside a healthy hive
- Entrance design and defensive holes — how bees protect their homes
- The “transitional zone” within the hive — which I’ve spent five years studying in detail
This ongoing research has now evolved into my latest project: understanding the natural nest capacity — the number of honeybee colonies that would naturally occur in specific areas across the UK and, eventually, Europe.
This question — “How many wild honeybee nests should there be here?” — has never been properly researched. Interestingly, there has been important work done in Australia, so last year I travelled to the University of Adelaide (on my own time and expense) to learn more about their studies on honeybee density.
Every discovery feeds back into the design and purpose of the Eco Beehive — a hive inspired by nature, perfected by bees.
The Next Big Step
This project is like no other I’ve tackled to date. Previously, my largest single experiment involved 16 bait hives over a three-year period — a big undertaking in itself! But this next stage goes far beyond that.
To properly understand natural nest capacity, I’ll need to establish clusters of at least 20 hives in various locations all around the UK, each one monitored carefully over a number of years.
It’s a huge challenge — but also an incredibly exciting one. With your support, this work can help us finally understand how honeybees naturally balance their populations across landscapes, giving us the knowledge to protect them better than ever before.
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Welcome to Gardeners Beehive resurch
Welcome to Gardeners Beehive - bees in the wild
Some of My Research and Discoveries
There are a few simple things to understand about trees:
- They don’t change shape.
- Trees don’t grow legs and move around.
- They host other bugs and biological processes.
Why are these obvious things important? Because realizing this helps us understand how the Victorians were able to take a simple nest box and turn it into a honey-producing machine. Conventional beehives are essentially machines for farming honey — not designed to help bees thrive, but to take advantage of their survival instincts to produce large amounts of honey. The result? Bees are productive, but not necessarily happy or healthy.
If you look at the middle picture, you’ll see a nest of bees in a tree. Over winter, warm air rises, so honey is naturally stored at the top. This understanding of bee behavior and tree biology has inspired me to develop two completely new ways of harvesting honey — techniques that are unique to my research and focus on the bees’ health, not just honey production.
Why Your Support Matters
Discoveries like these — understanding how bees naturally store honey, how tree nests function, and developing new, bee-friendly harvesting techniques — don’t happen on their own. Each experiment, each hive visit, each observation takes time, fuel, and equipment.
Even though I sell honey and beehives, those sales barely cover the costs of maintaining hives, traveling to different locations, and experimenting with new methods. Your monthly contribution is what makes this research possible. Just £5 a month helps fund:
- Trips to study wild and managed bee nests across the UK and Europe
- Hive and equipment maintenance for safe, sustainable beekeeping
- Materials for testing and developing new harvesting techniques
- Planting and maintaining bee-friendly gardens for research and conservation
- My time researching on top of a normal day job
Every small donation keeps this work going, helping bees thrive naturally while also allowing me to continue innovating ways to harvest honey without harming them.
[Bee a Hero — £5/Month Support Our Research Projects]
“It is only because of ongoing support from people like you that this research is possible. Thank you for helping the bees!”
Project to date
2023
Had the idea of working out a beter way of determining natural hive densitys in the Uk .. I had been to a conferance of how building regulations would be including a bionet gain of 10% or some rubish. But this got me thinking, they would put a section of land aside for 35 years and this was suposed to offset the destroyed land that would not have a building on it, then in this section of land just pile in ponds and trees and bird boxes and bat boxes AND BEEHIVES,, but with very little evidence of actual science but quite a bit of sudo science,, so I figured that would only stay afloat for a few years then people would have to actualy prove scientificaly they where doing something positive. Thus the seed for the resurch
2024
I set about coverting one of my sites, and set up two new sites.
WHat are these sites??
well what I am aiming to achive is this:
for every diferent type of landscape in the UK and a cross Europe I want to know exactly and corectly what is the expected load capasity of natural bee coloneys if they had more acomedation than they needed, and what this would look like and what where the anomalys.
2025
so this year the hives from last year are starting to get populated and, yes the anomalys are starting to show themselves.
we have three sites.
one is a medow
one is a semy rural / urban area
and the last one is half medow half trees.
ANd yes something that I have knowen for some time as resurfaced. if you have dives that are undaturaly close together as soon as one swarms , even if it is the strongest and oldest , it can often be robedt to extinction, and or then over run by predation from other bugs
So with the first areas set up
As I move along this will morph into a mor eorganised diciplnded resurch porject but at the moment we still dont know what we dont know. this is in part why traditional burocratice overly regulated resurch porjects fail. they are normaly conducted ove rto short a time scale, in to small an area with to few test point and so on.
2026
With finacial help from donatiosn I inted to creat a few more test areas, and improve on the ones I already have. I inted to creat a more formal mesuring, testing, alocation and monitoring system.
Going forward
In a few summers I should have almost all the common areas maped out with a strategy for detemining how many hives a specific are can suport. this woill not be so great for developers who just want to dump stuff in a small area get the acreditation and move on. but it will definetly be better for honeybss and othe bug and plinaitos. as they will not be out compeated. but also bees will have hives that will be able to last the 35 year and longer.