The 'National-Warre' Beehive.

Little John · Apr 18, 2017

Some time before Xmas I set about converting some unused Warre boxes into a form which would take standard National DNx frames - maintaining exactly the same hive volume and comb area as the framed-hive championed by Emile Warre in the 5th Edition of his book 'Beekeeping for All' - the only difference being that his boxes contained 9 frames to maintain a square footprint, whereas mine contain 8, and are oblong.

These four hives are intended to be run largely on a 'leave-alone' basis, and with this in mind a decision was made to fit Slatted-Rack floors to the hives with OMF's below, to be left permanently open - the idea being that the OMF and Slats should provide sufficient attenuation of any inclement winds, whilst at the same time assuring adequate ventilation.

This is the state of play, as at yesterday. These are two of the four bases, with OMF's recycled from pre-existing Warre hives:

With Slatted-Racks over:

And with a box on top - the yellow boxes having 25mm walls, all others 38mm:

And from here it's just a case of onwards and upwards - with 3 boxes per stack (24 DNx frames) and a conventional Crown Board and telescopic Roof - the latter which are still to be made, but it looks like these four hives will successfully meet the 'on-line by the 1st of May' deadline which I'd set before Xmas.

FWIW, the two other hives (not shown) have boxes painted Blue, and Green - my attempt at making the beekeeping yard that little bit brighter ...

LJ

Little John · Apr 21, 2017

I've just realised - anyone coming across this thread without having read my earlier posts on the subject, wouldn't know the full story. So ...

Some considerable time ago, I was intrigued by the Russian 'Alpine' Hive (a Warre variant) which was being successfully employed by commercial Russian beekeepers working on a tight budget. So I built a couple. Here's the stack of boxes I made for the purpose:

As 'back-garden hives' they worked well, and the bees appeared to adore living within that narrow 'chimney' space - but a serious problem arose of trying to fit these hives into an existing (100% DN-framed) working apiary, as the combs are totally non-interchangable between hives. And so these hives were de-commissioned, and initially stored outside due to lack of storage space. These then became magnets for incoming swarms, and so I moved them indoors where they sat for a year or two collecting dust.

From time to time I toyed with the idea of reducing the size of the boxes to make mating nucs with, but the amount of work involved always promised to be disproportionate to any benefits gained. I even tried giving the hives away, but there were no takers ...

Then, following-on from a thread on Beemaster, where a guy was faced with exactly the same problem of an unwanted Warre box - and where he decided to make mating-nucs - I saw the possibility of gluing two Russian boxes together to give me a 220mm height (adding a batten later to give 225mm with a Top Bee Space), and then cut the boxes as per the red line as shown here:

The plan then was to insert a suitable piece of timber - somewhere around 4.5" - into that cut and remake each box, extending the rebates inwards to accommodate the longer National lugs. But - when I came to do this - retaining the existing 'Warre' box ends and making completely new longer sides for them promised to be the better option.

So - here are a few of the unloved and unwanted Warre-style boxes which were collecting dust:

Some of which were then turned into these boxes (still to be finished of course), with only the redundant 'D' hand-holds betraying their previous existence:

A shot of the thicker sidewall to be used on the other boxes:

And with the frames in place:

So - nothing special perhaps - just some chunky 8-frame boxes - but the making of which has very nicely resolved the problem of what to do with those unwanted Warre boxes ...

LJ

AndyO · Mar 13, 2019

Update

Hey,
I'm new to this so may not know my way around too well, but is there an update on how the hives worked out when they went live?

Lancs Lad · Mar 13, 2019

This is a Warre hive I built so I could use DN4 frames. I made it from Paynes poly nuc brood boxes by cutting the internal feeder out, and each box then takes 8 frames. I built a 50mm polystyrene floor, with under floor entrance.
I used it last year and it surpassed all my expectations to such an extent that I have built another three for this season.
It got to six boxes high but I decided not to add any more because I would have to take step ladders to the apiary, 120lbs of honey was extracted from it and I must have left over 40lbs on for winter. The colony also pulled out 40 frames half of them being natural comb.