{"id":2175,"date":"2025-09-19T10:35:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=2175"},"modified":"2025-09-19T10:35:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T17:35:00","slug":"meet-the-hive-architect-the-carpenter-independently-installing-homes-for-honeybees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=2175","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Hive Architect, the Carpenter Independently Installing Homes for Honeybees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thisiscolossal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/hive-2.jpg\" alt=\"Meet the Hive Architect, the Carpenter Independently Installing Homes for Honeybees\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWherever I go, bees come,\u201d says Matt Somerville. A carpenter by trade, Somerville is also a committed conservationist, having spent the last 14 years building and installing approximately 800 homes for the dwindling insect populations around the English countryside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1h6K_cS0m_w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Hive Architect<\/a>,\u201d a film directed by Max Weston and released by the outdoor clothing brand Fera, follows the scrappy, pipe-smoking woodworker as he carves out a log, builds a conical roof, and finally ventures out into a meadow to erect his construction. \u201cThere is a widely held theory that our British honey bee couldn\u2019t exist without being domesticated by beekeepers,\u201d says Fera. \u201cHowever, for bee conservationists like Matt Somerville, this theory is ludicrous.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Somerville typically spends his winters in his woodshop, creating as many hives as he can during the cold months. Just as the first flowers spring from the ground, he heads out to bucolic locations, where he rigs up a contraption that allows him to install the heavy builds all on his own.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to watching the beautifully shot documentary above, you can find more about Somerville and his process on his website, <a href=\"https:\/\/beekindhives.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bee Kind Hives<\/a>. (via <a href=\"https:\/\/kottke.org\/25\/09\/the-hive-architect-saving-britains-wild-bees\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kottke<\/a>)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1119\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thisiscolossal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/hive-1.jpg\" alt=\"a wooden bee hive\" class=\"wp-image-462443\" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1105\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thisiscolossal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/hive-3.jpg\" alt=\"straw roofs\" class=\"wp-image-462445\" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1439\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thisiscolossal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/hive-4.jpg\" alt=\"a white man with gray hair touches a wood hive \" class=\"wp-image-462446\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thisiscolossal.com\/members\">Colossal Member<\/a> today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thisiscolossal.com\/2025\/09\/bee-hive-architect-matt-somerville\/\">Meet the Hive Architect, the Carpenter Independently Installing Homes for Honeybees<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thisiscolossal.com\/\">Colossal<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWherever I go, bees come,\u201d says Matt Somerville. A carpenter by trade, Somerville is also a committed conservationist, having spent the last 14 years building and installing approximately 800 homes&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}