Stewarton hive

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, workers at Rothamsted Experimental Station built and operated a Stewarton, demonstrating some of the old claims for the design.

Most notable of these was John McCulloch McPhedran, who wrote regularly in the British Bee Journal as 'The Renfrewshire Beekeeper'.

[2] More recently, Dr. Eva Crane has summarised information,[3] although, as with many aspects of bee keeping history, detail appears to have been overlooked, and a few 'modern myths' have been allowed to develop.

The available evidence challenges as myth the idea that Wren was himself a 'bee master'; it is more likely that he simply cooperated with his mentor, John Wilkins, and drew the hive that several were interested in.

Thus Ellis is probably wrong when she claims that the octagonal hive "was the cabinet-maker's approximation of the honey bee's round nest".

Put simply, with the sliders inserted in the central portion of the box at the top of the brood nest, thus inhibiting the queen from laying above,the withdrawal of the sliders to the sides allows workers to begin drawing comb and storing honey at the sides of the honey box above.