Transferring Bees into a Warre

[Pope Pius IX]

Hello everyone. First post from me here for a while. Probably a beginner's question but happy for it to be moved elsewhere.

I've recently started a beekeeping club at my work, which is a school. We're fortunate to have quite a big budget to play with so to keep it interesting, we're getting two colonies, with one colony housed in a National hive and one in a Warre. We've got both hives, set up and ready to go, but without bees. The bees, with luck, are coming next week.

Transferring the bees into the National will be pretty straightforward as they're going to be supplied on National frames. I've done this before. However, I've got no idea at all about how to transfer the second colony of bees from the National frames that they'll be arriving on into the Warre hive. Not only are the frame dimensions different, but the Warre method doesn't even have frames to speak of.

The bees are unlikely to be at their hives before around 8pm, and their hives are located essentially in a field - so we'll have maybe 90 minutes of decent light to make the transfer.

Surely the bees can't simply be brushed off their frames into the Warre box?

How do you get bees into a Warre if they're supplied on National frames?

(While I'm at it, what's the spacing for top bars in a Warre?!)

 

[Boston Bees]

Here's the method:

1) Buy another national hive quickly and put the bees in that.
2) Stick the Warre in a corner and hope a swarm moves into it (if not you could put a package into it next spring, as there will no frames to worry about with a package)
3) Sit down and have a strong word with yourself about your inexplicable decision to get a Warre hive, and order a national nuc, with absolutely no idea about how to get one into the other

It's really difficult. You can theoretically chop the national frames, but really, why on earth would you put yourself or the bees through that drama.

What in the name of all that is holy were you thinking?

 

[boywonder]

I have been through the same thought process earlier this year, when contemplating transferring bees from one of my 14*12s into my new Warre. In the event, I was lucky, in that I instead bagged a lovely prime swarm of local black bees in May, which I basically just chucked in. There was a bit more to it than that (see my Warre blog linked), but basically, with the swarm in a mode to rapidly build new comb, and with a flow on of sorts, I was more or less able to let them get on with it. Nonetheless, I did put an english feeder atop a national feeder board for a couple of days to help induce them to stay/draw.

My feeling is that this is not an especially great time of year to be looking to get a colony established from scratch in a Warre. I guess one positive is that you're likely to be seeing the start of the summer flows. That said, I think you'll achieve it easily, somehow !!

Proper aficionados (notably David Heaf) have written "proper" techniques, which I'm sure you'll find on the web, but, at the risk of getting shot down:

If it were me, I would:
1) Set up 2 Warre boxes on the floor, and insert a national QX between the two (clearly this would be oversized, and stick out of the edges). I'd do this to avert the risk of an early absconsion, and I'd leave it in place for a good few days
2) Take a hacksaw and a pair of kitchen scissors to a National frame of drawn comb, to fashion it into a size which will fit in the centre of your Warre top box. This would be removed as soon as the bees have built their own comb
3) Chuck, brush the bees in - being careful, obviously, to get the Queen in
4) Add the top bars to the top box
5) Shut it up ASAP, which could involve either:
a) just placing the cover cloth / quilt / roof on, and crossing fingers, or, as I did
b) placing a national feeder board, english feeder, super (as a feeder eke) and roof atop the top bars for a couple of days

I'm sure whatever Heath Robinson technique you use, you will have success. It's just bees in a box, at the end of the day; if they don't abscond, they will find a way of making this home.

 

[boywonder]

Spacing for the top bars in a Warre is 36mm between top bar centres. You should get 8 in a box, evenly spaced.

https://warre.biobees.com/plans.htm
Panel pins are a great help

 

[rolande]

Spacing for the top bars in a Warre is 24mm between top bar centres. You should get 8 in a box, evenly spaced.

https://warre.biobees.com/plans.htm
Panel pins are a great help

24mm + the 12mm space?

 

[boywonder]

24mm + the 12mm space?

Edited. Sorry. Not woken up. 12+12+12 = 36 !! ... Thanks for the heads up

I should have either just got my tape measure out - or, better still, engaged brain re. bee space !

 

[rolande]

Edited. Sorry. Not woken up. 12+12+12 = 36 !! ... Thanks for the heads up

I should have either just got my tape measure out - or, better still, engaged brain re. bee space !

I'm no expert at engaging brain, so I won't comment further!

 

[Pope Pius IX]

Thanks everyone for all of this.

The "what were you thinking" I can answer - I wanted to sit a Warre and a National next to each other and in future years compare honey flow, disease levels and so on. Might be something in that. Additionally, we only got funding for the club in April by which time unless I've missed some major suppliers of bees, I was in a take-what-you-can-get situation. And if we don't have bees in September for the beekeeping club, I'll have to do something I like less!

Question for boywonder - I probably will use the method you've described, or something like it, and need to just check - you're saying that the bees should essentially be locked into the Warre for a couple of days, yes? With a feeder, obviously.

 

[Ian123]

Proper aficionados (notably David Heaf) have written "proper" techniques[/QUOTE

“I have to admire Mr Heaf's transparency, but also his sheer hubris. His early timeline goes like this:

2007: 6 Warre hives populated with bees.

2008: All 6 colonies survived the 2007/8 winter (0% winter loss). Some high varroa counts seen (no treatment given of course). More Warre colonies added making 11 in total by the end of the year.

2009: 5 out of the 11 colonies starved during the 2008/9 winter (45% winter loss). Another was found to contain a non-laying queen in May. More Warre hives were populated during the year, making a total of 12. Colonies had to be fed in autumn as they were critically short of stores.

2010: 2 of the 12 failed overwinter due to a non-laying queen (17% winter loss). More Warre hives were added, making a total of 15, but 3 died during the year. At the end of the summer David wrote “Of the 15 colonies in Warrés in the summer, only 12 are going into winter -- the same as last year -- and some of those are already looking as though they will not make it through winter.”

2011: Only 4 out of the 12 over-wintered colonies survived (67% winter loss).

At this point (early 2011) David decided it was the right time to publish “Bee-Friendly Beekeeper: A Sustainable Approach”

I had to look up "Sustainable" and "Friendly" just to make sure I had understood the meaning of those words correctly.” Boston bees

He has some proper ideas for sure

 

[boywonder]

Question for boywonder - I probably will use the method you've described, or something like it, and need to just check - you're saying that the bees should essentially be locked into the Warre for a couple of days, yes? With a feeder, obviously.

... Hi there - not 'locked in' as such. All bees, with the exception of the Queen should be able to come and go. The QX would simply sit between the bottom (currently unpopulated) Warre Brood Box and the populated top box.

When I have previously done interventions (e.g. Bailey comb changes) and just moved a laying Queen into a new box with little or no laying space, I have had experience of her then just deciding to bugger off with the colony to find a new home elsewhere. The QX would prevent this; also butchering an existing national frame of drawn comb would give her somewhere to lay initially, and for the colony to coalesce around ....

Just belt and braces, that's all. Just ideas, but, if the Queen can't depart, where else are they going to set up home ?? As long as they have access to some food (even in the absence of frames of stores, and with the patchy weather, it's very unlikely they are not going to be able to forage - but the feeder will mitigate this entirely), what else can happen other than them staying and colonising ?

To that extent, if it were me, today, I wouldn't even bother butchering a frame. They will build comb, and I'd then not have the faff of removing said frame at some subsequent date. However, I accept that your're then limiting the extent to which the (laying) Queen is able to immediately commence re-laying, and, given the time of year - and your presumable desire to get them very well established before autumn - that might not be the best idea.

 

[boywonder]

I have to admire Mr Heaf's transparency, but also his sheer hubris.

... etc... Ian ... you can call it hubris if you like, and - agreed - the way they are presented above, the stats on David's 'success' don't make for appealing reading (unlike his books, which I would certainly recommend).

There are very many counter-arguments - some (but not all) of which have been done to death on other threads, and discussion of which is way above my own pay grade, and best served on another thread to this (it being a very practical question raised by the OP).

However, from a purely personal perspective, I have to say that I have gone into (trying) Warre beekeeping knowing that there will be die-outs and failures way beyond the levels to which I have in my fully managed 14*12 colonies, where I am clearly much more interventionist and 'nurture' some stocks which are plainly - on emprical evidence - NOT locally adapted, NOT especially varroa tolerant, NOT frugal etc...

I think somebody (like David) minded to pursue a 'locally adapted' and 'sustainable' agenda is bound both to take the flak from the 'buckfast/italian' / 'crop-centric' / 'vape & feed-em-to-death' brigade and be found to have 'performance stats' which do not measure up. But that's surely not the point.

Anyhow, I have no vested interest, and as a hobbyist, sit very open-mindedly between both camps.

 

[Nirakaro]

I'm in a similar situation to yourself – near-beginner trying to get bees into a Warré hive.

In my case, I have a couple of horizontal top bar hives, so I put out a few top-bar-shaped swarm boxes, but by the time a swarm arrived, out of pure cussedness I'd built a Warré hive, and now have the challenge of getting these horizontal bees into a vertical hive. One option it seems – slow but gentle – is to make a Warré-box-shaped hole in the bottom of you nuc box/swarm box (not easy if there's bees in it, but you should have a spare one after you've hived the other colony?), put it on top of a couple of Warré boxes, and let the colony 'grow down' into them. I gather this may take a year or so, so you need to give them a temporary roof and probably some insulation for the winter; so this may or may not suit you. Once you're confident that the queen has moved downstairs (or you've persuaded her), you put an excluder below the nuc box, harvest the honey in it, and hey presto!, you're sorted. Next year, you can ask me if it worked.

 

[Boston Bees]

I have been through the same thought process earlier this year, when contemplating transferring bees from one of my 14*12s into my new Warre. In the event, I was lucky, in that I instead bagged a lovely prime swarm of local black bees in May, which I basically just chucked in. There was a bit more to it than that (see my Warre blog linked), but basically, with the swarm in a mode to rapidly build new comb, and with a flow on of sorts, I was more or less able to let them get on with it. Nonetheless, I did put an english feeder atop a national feeder board for a couple of days to help induce them to stay/draw.

My feeling is that this is not an especially great time of year to be looking to get a colony established from scratch in a Warre. I guess one positive is that you're likely to be seeing the start of the summer flows. That said, I think you'll achieve it easily, somehow !!

Proper aficionados (notably David Heaf) have written "proper" techniques, which I'm sure you'll find on the web, but, at the risk of getting shot down:

If it were me, I would:
1) Set up 2 Warre boxes on the floor, and insert a national QX between the two (clearly this would be oversized, and stick out of the edges). I'd do this to avert the risk of an early absconsion, and I'd leave it in place for a good few days
2) Take a hacksaw and a pair of kitchen scissors to a National frame of drawn comb, to fashion it into a size which will fit in the centre of your Warre top box. This would be removed as soon as the bees have built their own comb
3) Chuck, brush the bees in - being careful, obviously, to get the Queen in
4) Add the top bars to the top box
5) Shut it up ASAP, which could involve either:
a) just placing the cover cloth / quilt / roof on, and crossing fingers, or, as I did
b) placing a national feeder board, english feeder, super (as a feeder eke) and roof atop the top bars for a couple of days

I'm sure whatever Heath Robinson technique you use, you will have success. It's just bees in a box, at the end of the day; if they don't abscond, they will find a way of making this home.

Just to be clear, what you are proposing he does with all the brood frames from the nuc? Give them to the other hive?

 

[boywonder]

Just to be clear, what you are proposing he does with all the brood frames from the nuc? Give them to the other hive?

Exactly.

That's what I would do.... and let the Warre build completely from scratch. Like I say, maybe not an ideal time of year initiating an enforced break in brood for the Warre lot. It does however help get around the horrible process of having to use a conversion board etc... and I guess that the additional brood offered up to the other hived colony is going to give it an instant boost.

I don't want criticising (and not that's what I'm suggesting you are doing ) ... I think that we all know that this is not an ideal situation to contemplate. Maybe it's a crap idea, but it is what I would do; so any better alternative approaches appreciated ...

... given the fact that my own Warre will probably not overwinter (a la Ian's observations), so I'll probably be faced with the same conundrum as to how to repopulate from an overwintered nuc it in spring

 

[Boston Bees]

Beekeeping with the Warré hive -- Populating a Warré hive (biobees.com)

 

[drex]

At this time of year my preferred method would be chop and crop. Gives the bees the best start. It is a daunting process, but well planned is simple enough to do. I use tree loppers to cut the top bar. I was fairly new to beekeeping when I did my first and it went well

 

[North End Bees]

Just belt and braces, that's all. Just ideas, but, if the Queen can't depart, where else are they going to set up home ??

If the Queen can't depart, how are the drones supposed to get out?

 

[North End Bees]

That's what I would do.... and let the Warre build completely from scratch.

What, in the middle of July?

Maybe it's a crap idea

Maybe..

 

[Erichalfbee]

Here's the method:

1) Buy another national hive quickly and put the bees in that.
2) Stick the Warre in a corner and hope a swarm moves into it (if not you could put a package into it next spring, as there will no frames to worry about with a package)
3) Sit down and have a strong word with yourself about your inexplicable decision to get a Warre hive, and order a national nuc, with absolutely no idea about how to get one into the other

It's really difficult. You can theoretically chop the national frames, but really, why on earth would you put yourself or the bees through that drama.

What in the name of all that is holy were you thinking?

I think this is by far the best solution ever

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I think this is by far the best solution ever