Before movable-frame hives, beekeepers across Eastern Europe and the British Isles kept bees in skeps — domed baskets coiled from straw rope — and in koshovi, hollowed sections of log ("log-gums") set upright or on their side. Bees built comb freely inside, fixed to the walls, with no frames to lift out.
This simulation puts a woven skep, a log-gum and a modern frame hive side by side (via the selector) so you can compare how the comb is built and, crucially, whether it can be inspected without destroying it.
A handful of living-history apiaries and folk museums across Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia and Britain still keep skeps and koshovi under special welfare exemptions — the colonies are usually fed from a modern nucleus each spring rather than harvested destructively, so the tradition survives without the bees paying the historical price.
Compare a woven straw skep, a hollowed log-gum (koshovi) hive and a modern movable-frame hive side by side, and see why fixed natural comb — however beautiful and traditional — cannot be inspected for disease the way a modern hive can.
Skeps and log-gums hold comb the bees build and glue in place themselves, with no way to remove a single comb. A modern frame hive lets every comb slide out individually, which is why bee-health law now requires inspectable hives outside demonstration apiaries.
Pick a hive type from the dropdown, toggle the cutaway to see inside, and drag the comb-age slider to watch wax darken from fresh pale cells to years-old brood comb. Adjust bee activity and auto-rotate to explore the scene.
The Ukrainian word koshovi (кошовий) traces back to the same woven-basket root as "kosh" — hollowed logs and coiled-straw skeps were the dominant hive style across Eastern Europe for centuries before the movable frame spread in the late 1800s.