The Warre Hive - Part 4 - Making the top bars

Making the Top Bars

The Warre hive, like the Top Bar Hive, has a series of wooden strips rather than the conventional frames.
They are easy to make and there are a couple of ways they could be improved.

Click the button to see the video.

The Warre Hive - Part 3 - Making the floor

Making the Floor

The floor is pretty straightforward. However Warre's plans didn't allow for the varroa mite. The mite didn't arrive in Europe until the 1960's and didn't get to France until the 1982, long after Warre's death.
I have made something similar to the floors I have on my National Hives

Click the button to see the video.

There is something on my website here about varroa.

January Update

It's the New Year, the Shortest Day has passed and very gradually we move towards Spring. Hurray!!

So what's been going on?
Not a lot really.
The winter wraps are on and the winter feed has started.
The Ravensden and Stevington bees all finished off the fondant I put on a couple of weeks ago whereas only half the Scald End bees did. I've bought 2 12½ kg blocks to get them through the winter.
The recent mild weather isn't good for the bees as its just warm enough for them to fly and burn up energy and stores but there's nothing for them to replace it.


Looking at my winter list of Things To Do, its still as depressingly long as when I set it up.
I have allowed myself to spend far too much time faffing around with the Warre Hive and I've only managed to build one nuc for the summer swarms.

However in my defence I have yet to set up central heating in my shed and its cold in there.

Woodpeckers

Every year the Association secretary issues a note reminding members to take steps to prevent woodpecker damage.
I can remember remarking to a neighbour that I hadn't seen any woodpeckers this year so I was a bit surprised to see this when I went to Ravensden  to do the wraps and feed.

From the white dust around the hole it looks like it had a go at where I have repaired a previous hole with filler.
For the time being I have put a square of wood over it but underneath is a bit of mesh which will give the woodpecker beak ache if it tries it again.
Next Spring I will put in an undamaged brood box and properly repair the old one.

As you both know I don't make New Year Resolutions but at a recent bee keepers meeting the main discussion was about what we intended doing differently this year.
'To stop being stupid and getting stung so much' immediately sprang to mind but the one thing I will/may try to do differently is swarm control.
When talking to other bee keepers I am aware some of my views are not entirely widely held. I'm not too bothered about swarm control and a very expert bee keeper I know said to me he didn't understand why beeks were so preoccupied with it  - 'you get a nice new young queen and get rid of an old one'.
The problem is that there are apparently 29 different methods of doing it - all with their own fervent disciples.
Much discussion at the meeting focused on what's called the Pagden method but a week or so later a very distinguished bee keeper and author wrote an article saying the Pagden method wasn't very effective and advocated using what is called the Snellgrove method.
Don't ask me to explain it - as I read it it made perfect sense and about 30 seconds later I couldn't remember a thing.
Old age gets you like that and I share Homer Simpson's view that:-

every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?”

I do have some exact instructions on how to do it so expect a blog about this sometime later this year.

Wraps and Fondant

I've probably said this before but honey bees do not hibernate and bees at the centre of the cluster are quite mobile and maintain their warmth by flexing their flying muscles. The centre of the cluster of bees is still quite warm - 29C compared with a normal temperature of ~35C.

Bees on the outside of the cluster are much more densely packed and appear motionless or even dead. However gradually the outside bees migrate to the centre of the cluster to be replaced by the warm bees. A bit like penguins.

Although the bees are settled in for the winter, there are still things to do that can help them.
As with most things there are a wide range of different views about winter insulation and a wide range of different materials that can be used. The issue around insulation is that a balance has to be struck between no insulation and possibly the bees die and too much where the bees are kept too warm and continue to be active and consume stores too quickly.

I have settled into a regular routine as regards winter care and touch wood I have been reasonably successful.
To insulate the hive I use wraps that are sheets of plasticised material that is wrapped around the hive.
To supplement the stores they have built up I give them blocks of baker's fondant.

Click the button to see the video,

The Warre Hive - Part 2 - Making the boxes

The plans Warre produced were very detailed although people have tweaked them slightly to allow for techniques and materials not available to Warre.
Hives are often made of cedar which is very weather resistant being an oily wood but its also expensive so I am going to use cheap wood.

One of the underlying principles of Warre's hive is that it should be easy to build and I am going to try to stick to his dimensions to save any potential problems - if I change one dimension this might have an unintended knock on effect that could muck things up.

On the face of it the brood boxes are fairly simple.
The walls are 210mm high and 20mm thick.
The nearest Wickes gets to this is 110mm by 19mm. Thickness is OK and I will have to join two pieces to get the height.
The handles are simple blocks but they need to be secure as a full brood box can be heavy.

I am going to make things difficult for myself by having observation windows in each box. This isn't in Warre's original plans but the man who translated Warre's plans into English, added this as an option.

Click the button to see the video.
I'm sorry the video is much longer than usual.
My favourite YouTube channel is about someone who is rebuilding a very old boat and his posts are about cutting up huge pieces of wood with noisy 'boy toy' tools and I think I became a bit Tally Ho.

The Warre Hive - Part 1.

As both of you know I have a Top Bar Hive that I am very fond of despite being [perhaps because its] no use for producing 'retail' honey but its allegedly good for the bees.

I attended a talk that explained these hives were widespread in Africa as they don't need complicated machinery to make and thought to mimic the situation where bees take up residence in a fallen log and the colony expands horizontally.

Therefore its not surprising that this type of hive is popular with what I unkindly call the 'eco hippy' beekeepers who practice 'natural' bee keeping.
This begs the question 'what is unnatural bee keeping?' but it's true that conventional hives like the ones I use, are not an entirely natural environment for bees and they have to do things they wouldn't do in the wild.

There are other types of 'natural' hive and one of the most common is the Warre [pronounced War ray] hive.
It was invented by Emile Warre [1867-1951] a French monk who looked at dozens of different hive designs before coming up with what he called the 'people's hive' and plans were included in his book 'Beekeeping for all'

It was his goal to find a hive system that was simple, natural, economical, and bee-friendly and it mimics the situation where a colony lives in a hollowed out tree - its a vertical Top Bar Hive.

It is usually three/our identical boxes stacked on top of each other and like the TBH has bars that the bees can build their comb on.
On top is an insulation quilt and on top of that the roof.

The boxes don't have a queen excluder so the colony can move up and down the boxes as they would in a tree. The boxes can have windows so you can check where the colony is and how its doing.

Warre provided detailed plans of how to build one and I'm going to give it a go.
Although the Top Bar Hive turned out OK my woodworking skills are minimal. However my son in law is a joiner and he will be able to advise.

In Warre's book he says:-

The production of honey is the main purpose of beekeeping, one that the beekeeper pursues before everything else

Don't agree with that and for me the Warre, like the Top Bar Hive, is more of a curiosity piece and I'm not concerned with 'retail' honey production. Extracting honey from this type of hive is a PITA.

Warre also said:-

I pity those who keep bees only to earn money. They deprive themselves of a very sweet enjoyment.

'pity' is a bit strong but I agree with the sentiment.

Next: - Part 2 - Making the boxes

November update

November update

We've had some mild spells at the beginning of the month and the girls took the  opportunity to build up stores.
Click the button to see the bees in action.

The autumn liquid feed has now been completed and most of the hives has taken about a gallon each. One was a little slower than the others but still took lots on.

During November I will get fondant blocks ready for the Winter and put some covers around the hive to keep them warm.

The hornets have gone.

I noticed that the nest wasn't visible from the entrance as it has been and there was no activity in the box.
Eventually I plucked up enough courage to open the box up and all the hornets had gone.
At the bottom of the box was what looked like the remnants of a birds nest and then the remains of the hornets nest on top
It had largely disintegrated although some of the comb was intact.

Hopefully they will be back next Spring.

Solitary Bee Hives

I have made a couple of these for next Spring.
As I said before they, and the expensive posh things you buy in Garden Centres ARE NOT for honey bees or bumble bees.
They are better for the bees than the 'box of bamboo' things as at the end of the season you can take out the cocoons, clean them and then keep then until you release when the time is right the following Spring.
Also you can clean the hive up to stop the build up of pollen mites and other parasites.
The cassette can be taken out so you can see whats going on.

I will be selling these things for £15 and include a booklet about solitary bees, how to set up the hive and how to look after the cocoons.

A good year for honey ???????????

The British Beekeepers Association produce annual figures of the honey production of their members.
Apparently this year production was up from 23lb per hive to 30lb.
This produced numerous headlines like this.

I have to say I was a little surprised by this as the cold winter then very hot Summer meant things in the Bedfordshire area was pretty poor.
I haven't been able to find figures for each county but apparently Wales saw a big increase.
I was also surprised how many of the newspaper headlines attributed the increase to the warm weather.
Bees will fly between 15C and 19C but won't fly if its too hot.
Warm weather might mean the bees can fly but this doesn't mean they will be able to find forage. Locally it has been very dry so plants cannot produce nectar which in turn means the bees can't produce honey.
Apparently Welsh bee keepers have said that that they had hot humid weather for plants to produce nectar.
The BBKS press release says:-

It was a difficult year in climactic terms with a very cold snap nicknamed the Beast from the East halting the honey gathering in Spring and then a long drought in many parts of the country which meant plants with shallow roots stopped producing nectar.