Warre nonsense

[jarmo henttu]

There are huge claims about Warre hive, that it is cheap to manage. No need to inspect like frame hives.

- to crush the combs, honey will be used douple amount to produce new combs every time.

- no need to inspect so often.... well, what happens to swarm cells...

- how to inspect need of space for brood and honey...

- you cannot inspect the hive at all because you do not have movable frames.

- how to find and change the queen..... it is impossible. But you do not need to change the queen because the hive will make 2 normal swarms every year and bees will escape. It makes new queens.

WHat about varroa inspection and control.... I do not know.

 

[Murox]

You’re right to point these things out, the sales pitch encourages folk to love the idea of them and the image they've created in their mind. Through those rose tinted spectacles people get obsessed with their potential but overlook there flaws and make excuses for them. I also suspect that is coupled to incomplete knowledge about the system Emile Warre developed in his corner of France.
To be fair though a German beekeeper developed a beekeeping system almost identical to Warre’s and I think some beekeepers in Japan still employ a similar system of beekeeping.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Through those rose tinted spectacles people get obsessed with their potential but overlook there flaws and make excuses for them. I also suspect that is coupled to incomplete knowledge about the system Emile Warre developed in his corner of France.

I remember reading a contemporary's comments on Warre years ago, to paraphrase what he said "nice bloke. knows b*gger all about bees though"

 

[Murox]

Now that's an eloquent succinct opinion from your contemporary.

 

[Peterjay]

Initially, I had an open mind about the system. In, 2023, I volunteered to help someone locally who had built and attracted a swarm to a Warre starting in 2020. He had never taken honey from it, although to be fair to the bees, he hadn't tried to. It wouldn't have been right to the bees to have taken any honey last season; it would have meant killing some brood and risking starvation, but we placed an additional box below them. In May this year we finally got a whole box of honey; maybe 15 pounds. But the bottom box from last year still wasn't populated. The honey is very good but too cloudy for my liking.

It does not seem a practical system other than for observing and having bees in the garden.

 

[rolande]

I remember reading a contemporary's comments on Warre years ago, to paraphrase what he said "nice bloke. knows b*gger all about bees though"

I'd love a name in this instance if you can remember.

To be fair, I'd imagine that he had some clue, certainly enough to be exporting Italian queens to the UK in the 1920s. That said, I think his system is a disaster but even then, in the context of being a method for impoverished peasants to get some honey at no real cost it probably worked fine.

 

[warsaw_hive]

Chris Park in a video clip for Northern Bee Books says even today most bees in the world are kept on fixed comb. I'm curious if anyone has anymore info/numbers on this?

I have Warré hives and they've performed exactly as promised. Low cost to build and low cost(in time and money) to maintain. I harvest honey every year.

 

[jarmo henttu]

Chris Park in a video clip for Northern Bee Books says even today most bees in the world are kept on fixed comb. I'm curious if anyone has anymore info/numbers on this?

I have Warré hives and they've performed exactly as promised. Low cost to build and low cost(in time and money) to maintain. I harvest honey every year.

How many kilos you harvest per hive?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I have Warré hives and they've performed exactly as promised

poorly?

 

[Worldsend]

Former SBI used to refer to them as worry hives as they always worried what they would find

 

[user 819]

Ideal hive for stand alone non thinking low intervention beek, problem is they don't pick up the pieces when swarms intensionally are emitted causing issues for some one else to deal with .

 

[rolande]

I think the issue to a large extent is that the hive itself is inextricably linked to the warre methodology in many people's minds. The two needn't be the same, the box, ultimately is just that and can be used along the usual lines without any of the nadiring business. As far as I know the well known European guys who've achieved a level of success by keeping bees in warres Gatineaux/Denise/Heuval have all used some variation to the textbook method.

In a beesource post some years ago when he was moving towards the dadant hive Bernhard Heuval mentioned that he could buy three warres for the price of two dadants and would give them the edge up to about 250 colonies for stationary beekeeping despite individual averages being below that of the dadants, he also gave various reasons for preferring the dadants for larger scale and/or migratory work. Of course everything was written from his own personal perspective of having started at hobby level with warres and built a business with them before widening his view.

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Heuval's management of the buckfast abbey dadant hive was as I remember, said to be based on brother Adams methods but struck me, as a user of modified dadants as being plain odd...

 

[jarmo henttu]

If I say that I have open mind, and during 60 years in beekeeping I have learned every day something new, then I admit, that my head is full of rubbish.

 

[rolande]

If I say that I have open mind, and during 60 years in beekeeping I have learned every day something new, then I admit, that my head is full of rubbish.

I understand what you're saying