How to make a beehive

Make these authentic looking bee skeps for your summer decor! Follow this tutorial to learn how to make a beehive that looks like the real deal.

How’s your summer going? Flying by, I’m sure, just like ours. It always seems to once we get past the 4th of July. Although, we are not done yet! I still have some fun bee themed summer decor to share with you starting with teaching you how to make a beehive!

So the technical term for these type of dome shaped beehives is bee skeps. These bee skeps were traditionally made out coiled straw, rope or branches. The term skep is thought to come from the Old Norse word skeppe, which means “basket” or “hamper”. Under the dome is where the bees would live and form their honeycomb. They could fly in and out using the small opening on the bee skep.

More modern day beehives are made out of wood. However these older bee skeps have a visual appeal to them and are often associated with the term beehive. For this reason, and for ease, I will mostly be referring to my creations as DIY beehives. 🙂

DIY beehives made from rope

As you can see, I made two different sizes. The tutorial follows me making the smaller beehive, but the bigger one was made the same exact way. I will include the materials in the instructions needed to make both sizes. I had some leftover rope from my DIY rope wreaths that I made a couple years ago so I thought this would be a perfect way to use it up!

Although I did not have enough to make the whole thing so I had to buy a little more. That is why the bigger beehive looks like it is two-toned in color. Ha! Oh well, actually I think it looks kinda cool that way.

Another spoiler alert! I thought I had enough smaller rope to make the smaller beehive, however as you will see in the tutorial, I ran out very near the top!! Luckily I found just a little more rope in my craft supplies stash so I could finish it, but ideally you would just use two pieces of rope to make it, not three! LOL

I know in the close up pictures, you can see a quite a bit of hot glue, but when you are looking at the beehives in real life, you don’t notice it at all. The camera always picks up on things our natural eyes don’t. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s a nuisance. Like in this case! 😉

I added handles to mine because I liked the way they look, but that is totally optional. Just fyi, they are for looks only, the handles are not functional! I thought about tying them on by threading some small rope up from the inside, but in the end, hot gluing them on was much easier! 😉

WATCH THE QUICK VIDEO

Don’t want to read all the instructions? I have included a video in this post showing you how to make a beehive. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. Also, if you ever want to slow down the video, just click on the three dots in the lower right hand corner of the video and you can change the playback speed. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading.

Supplies to make a DIY beehive

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

Smaller beehive
- 3/8″ sisal rope, just get the 50 foot roll, that will be plenty
- Flower pot from Dollar Tree
Bigger beehive
- 3/4″ Manilla rope – I got my rope at Lowes – they cut it for you and it is .42 cents per foot! I used 30 feet of rope.
- I used a chicken wire cloche as my guide for the bigger one. You can see it in this Easter mantel post. I found it at Hobby Lobby but looks like they don’t carry it anymore. Something similar in shape like these would work though.
Sisal or jute twine for whipping ends
Hot Glue Gun and Glue Sticks
Scissors

How to whip a rope

Since the ropes we are using are made of natural fibers, you can’t fuse the ends with heat. It would only burn the rope. So to prevent fraying, the best way is to whip the ends of the rope with a smaller rope, or twine. I used the same sisal twine to do this for both sizes of rope. The bigger diameter rope really starts to unravel easily so it is easier to whip it where you want it to end first, then cut it with a carpenter’s knife. To whip a rope, first cut about a 12 inch long piece of twine.

Make a loop with the twine at the end of the rope. Start wrapping the twine around the rope, pulling it tight. I made about 8 turns around the rope. Then feed the end of the twine through the loop.

Pull the twine tight and hold down that end. While holding down the end, use your other hand to start pulling on the other end of the twine sticking out from under the wrapped twine. You will have to pull hard, until the crossed ropes go under the wrapped twine. If you don’t have enough grip in your fingers, you can use pliers to help pull the twine.

Cut off both ends of the twine and trim the rope end straight, if necessary.

Cut desired lengths of rope

Depending on what you are using as your guides to form your beehives, you want to cut two lengths of rope to wrap around the whole thing. You will leave a little space in between the two ropes for the opening for the bees to get in and out of the beehive. My rope was already cut in pieces since I was using leftovers from the wreath project.

I did measure the bigger diameter rope since I had to buy more. My first piece rope was about 12 ft. in length and the second piece was about 16 ft. in length. However, I forgot to measure the smaller rope sizes. You can just wrap the rope around the guide and figure out where you want the opening on the front of the beehive to be. That is where you will cut the rope. After you cut the rope, whip all open ends.

How to make a bee skep

Start wrapping the rope around the flower pot to get it in place to glue down.

Add hot glue along the top edge of the rope and press down the next level of rope on top of the first rope. Hold for a few seconds until the glue holds. There might be some extra glue that squeezes out, so watch out because it is HOT! You want to keep the glue towards the inside edge of the rope (closer to the flower pot) so it catches the next rope and so you don’t see it when the beehive is done.

Continue wrapping the rope around the flower pot and gluing it to itself. You may get some on the flower pot, but that is not a problem. You may need to flip the remainder of the rope over as you go along to get it to coil around the pot easier.

Glue the rope down until you come to the end of the first piece of rope.

Leave about an inch opening before you start the gluing down the second piece of rope.

Continue wrapping and gluing until you get to the top of the flower pot.

Form the top of the beehive

If you are using a flower pot, like I am, you will notice it is not a dome shape all the way to the top. To form the top of the dome, I used a piece of packing paper and crumpled it up until it was the shape I wanted. I held that on the top of the flower pot.

Wrap the rope around the paper and glue down just like you were doing trying to keep the glue on the inside edge of the rope.

When you get close to the top, remove the paper and the flower pot. The beehive will hold it’s shape now. This is about where I ran out of rope! Ugh! Ideally you want a piece that will continue to the top but alas, I did not have that. So I had to improvise.

So I pulled back a little of the rope and stuck the end of the rope into the beehive.

I started gluing down a third piece of rope to form the very top of the beehive. For this, wrap the rope around the top in on itself until you figure out where it needs to end. At that point on the rope, whip it and cut off the end.

Glue and wrap until you can’t anymore and stick the whipped end into the top hole.

Here is the finished beehive without a handle.

Add a handle to your beehive

Adding a handle is optional if you like the look. Whip the end of the remaining rope and measure out how long you want your handle to be. Cut the rope and whip the other end. If you are working with the 3/4″ rope, it is best to whip it first (whip it good! 🙂 ) and then cut it so it doesn’t start to unravel on you. Glue down the handle onto the beehive. Again, this is for show only, it will probably not hold the weight of the beehive.

Use your DIY beehive for decoration

It took me just under an hour to make one of these DIY beehives. Plus they were very inexpensive to make as well! I would say that is not bad at all for such a cute decoration! What do you think? They really resemble actual vintage bee skeps so I was very pleased with how they turned out.