The Warres Are Coming!

Feb 12, 2009

The past couple evenings I've been building the first Warré hive of 10+ to be deployed this Spring. I plan to place all Warré hives at the most remote outyards. The wineries in Dundee are the logical locations for these hives, and I think the reduced management (less than 5 times per year) will make them a more feasible option than top bar hives, which would require almost weekly maintenance during the height of the season. Close to Oak Grove (Milwaukie) I will be using a combination of top bar hives and Warrés, depending on the site.

It should be relatively easy to mass produce the Warrés, as the plans are simple and the components are largely rectangles of various sizes cut out of cedar. You can see in the photo below the beginnings of the Bee Thinking Warré hive assembly line.

In addition to hives, I will be building a lift to hoist the top boxes up to allow room to place additional boxes below. The genius of this method of beekeeping is that the colony is rarely disturbed, and the roof is only taken off once a year to harvest honey from the top boxes. In addition, it creates a perfect cycle of new comb, as new boxes are added below and full boxes are removed from the top, the brood continues to move downward into new boxes, thus reducing the opportunity for disease-laden comb.

Back to Backyard Beekeeping Blog