Thinking of getting a warre

[ugcheleuce]

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The most important in warre system is, that you cannot breed the bee stock and you cannot change the queen.

Mr Warre actually describes in his book how to replace the queen. It's very simple, and requires lots of smoke.

Put an empty box under the hive, and put a queen excluder on it, and put the other boxes on top of that. Then SMOKE THE HELL OUT OF THEM (from the top). Eventually, all the workers will be in the empty box at the bottom, and only the queen and some drones will be left walking about on the queen excluder.

Breeding and selecting queens is the basic of all beekeeping.

That depends on your region. In my area, most hobbyists buy their queens from a queen breeder every other year (and it's actually quite cheap to do it), so there's no need to breed and select queens.

 

[Finman]

Mr Warre actually describes in his book how to replace the queen. It's very simple, and requires lots of smoke.

Put an empty box under the hive, and put a queen excluder on it, and put the other boxes on top of that. Then SMOKE THE HELL OUT OF THEM (from the top).
.

That is enough to me. Do as you like. It is like to hunt wind.

And you cannot put a breed queen into that toyhive. I saw that 50 years ago. Queen lays one week and a swarm escapes away.


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[For want of a better word]

That depends on your region. In my area, most hobbyists buy their queens from a queen breeder every other year (and it's actually quite cheap to do it), so there's no need to breed and select queens

That is the crux of the matter.... but things are changing as beekeepers become more educated.

Yeghes da

 

[Little John]

I don't think I've read quite so much rowlocks (sounds like) about Warre Hives. So much ignorance has been spoken in this thread by people who quite clearly have never kept a Warre hive.

I run 2 Russian Alpine hives - a Warre variant - and my experience with them has been that, a) they are adored by the bees - they absolutely love them, and b) they are a pain in the butt from a beekeeper's point-of-view if you also keep conventional hives and try to somehow combine two very different systems in one beekeeping operation.

You only need to view the Russian YouTube videos - which show many hundreds of these hives being employed in a commercial operation - to see how successful they can be, in practice. ALL operations - including queen-rearing - can be performed using these hives.

They are not for me - but that's not because they're not bloody good hives, it's simply because they don't fit easily into the rest of my operation, which is British-National-based.

But for a back-garden hobbyist beekeeper, it is a hive design which in my view cannot be bettered - except perhaps by the Bienenkiste hive.

LJ

 

[psafloyd]

Read up on practical aspects for Warre hives. Particularly investigate the lifting arrangements. Several contraptions designed for it.

The alternative is to place all the expected number of boxes (plus one?) on at the beginning of the season and hope the bee inspector doesn't want to check out the brood, when it is fairly filled down.

I saw someone place all the boxes in situ with the brood at the top. He then drilled a hole in the face of each and fitted it with a demi john cork.

As the brood moved down, so he blocked the upper box and opened a hole to the box immediately below the brood.

It seems to work for him and it seems a sensible idea.

 

[psafloyd]

Ah, but I wish to use that unadulterated comb for making cosmetics, Finman. In so doing, I am investing in my other products. But otherwise, you are absolutely right. it depends on what you want from your bees.

Warre hive is the most expencive way to keep bees.

Frames are meant for beekeeper's convinience.

Half of your honey yield will be gone with continuous comb crushing.


Nothing is so expencice as poor man's life

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[psafloyd]

My only experience was forced upon me after I prepared a hive (which I got from Dishmop, RIP) ready for a swarm.

However, another swarm moved into it before I had sorted out the quilt at the top and they thrived. So I left them over winter thinking they had two chances, but didn't hold out much hope as they were going to be where I could put them, just off the ground, so much more prone to damp.

OK, it's been a mild winter, but despite being a bit quiet a couple of weeks ago, when I thought they may have succumbed, they are still going strong.

I think I will get the quilt sorted with the spare I have and give them a proper position to see how they get on this year.

I was thinking of getting an observation warre from here (Facebook link) - they look good and are cheap, and I'm interested in the idea of using top bars rather than frames. However I'm a little concerned about a few practical aspects:

• Since a full box will weigh close to 40lbs, adding new boxes under even two boxes becomes quite difficult: what's the solution? Does it require a friend?
• The comb obviously contains brood so can I expect that the topmost box(es) will be brood free?
• I'm assuming that it's impossible to extract the honey other than via crush & strain - is that correct?

Does anyone use warre and, if so, how do you address these issues?