# first warre hive



## Pondulinus (Jun 24, 2015)

I am also new to the hobby (started last year) but i went for a hive with frames at first to "learn the trade" and get to know the bees. 
I am very glad i did this as there are no one in my area that uses TBH, and i was also able to get help from seasoned beekeepers and learn from them. 
This year i will try to get my Warre hives going but, which I believe will be enough of a challenge with only one year of experience.
According to what i have read the inspections should be kept to a minimum and one needs to learn how to see how the bees are doing from the outside of the hive. 

There are probably many that disagrees with me and there are probably ways to circumvent the problems but this is my take on it 
Also, you dont help the bees by keeping honeybees, you help the flowers. 
But you do the bees u have got a favor if you dont expose them to pesticides and other chemicals and i believe that hives like the Warre hive is more healthy for them as it pretty much lets them go on with their buisness without our interference.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I have read a lot about Warre hives - and even incorporate some aspects of the hive design for my own bees, which live in ordinary, 10-frame Lang equipment.

But I think it would be a mistake for new beekeepers to believe that "conventional" beekeepers are not as beecentric and as deeply concerned about bees' welfare as those with Warre or TBH hives. It always troubles me when I read of enthusiatic newcomers who get the idea from reading or online sources that the design of the equipment, by itself, will solve or eliminate all the challenges that bees face.

You are setting yourself up for disappointment and (avoidable) loss of your bees if you think hive design alone - or even the philosophy that comes with some designs - will make you successful. 

Bees are livestock and they need the care and attention of their keepers to be the most successful and longest-lived they can be. And beginning beekeepers do themselves - and their bees - a great service if they are somewhat more interventional in the first year or so. Because you can't learn to keep bees well just by watching them from outside the box. 

I was the clumsiest, most clueless new beekeeper you can imagine and I'm sure my early bees paid a small price for that. OTOH, I have never lost a colony and my bees are thriving. I have two of my three original queens from 2013 alive and starting their fourth summer with me in their colonies. (They are from swarms so they may actually be a year older.) The third queen was naturally superceded last summer, so her colony is now headed by her daughter. I also have four daughter-queen colonies from splits I made from the first three. And a swarm I collected last summer. So you see, my little apiary has grown a bit!

But make no mistake: all this has happened only because I keep my bees as healthy, and as pest-free as I can. That means I monitor for varroa mites constantly and I treat - with carefully chosen chemicals - to suppress the wretched mites. And I make sure my colonies are well supplied with chow before winter, including in their first winter sugar bricks to augment what they had been able to collect that first year. I also use quilt boxes, like Warre hives, which helps a lot in my fierce northern NY winters. Some versions of all of these activities are needed by every beekeeper who wants long-term success: pest management, sufficient food stores, winter protection.

I welcome you to Beesource and I hope you have as pleasure from your bees as I have had. It's a very addictive and very satisfying activity.

Enjambres


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## BeeHoosier (Feb 21, 2016)

Thanks for the input. I really like the idea of being as treatment free as possible and I like the idea of being foundationless in the hive. I don't like the idea of adding chemicals just to increase honey production or to grow a colony faster or anything like that. I am sure some treatments are almost unavoidable, but I want to do as little as possible with extra chemicals and additives and such. With that said, I do not want to be a "set it and forget it" beekeeper. I have no problems checking on the hive and whatever other attention and care may be needed, I want to be hands on when needed. Obviously being new to beekeeping I am concerned that I won't know what need to be done and when to do it at first and I could compromise the hive (although I am doing lots of reading and searching to gain more and more knowledge). I will probably start with one hive and although I would like to catch a swarm, it seems like around here I will have to end up buying a package or a nuc (I am not 100% sure which would be better in my case).


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## Pondulinus (Jun 24, 2015)

First of all, its important to remember that there are a difference between chemicals and "chemicals". Some, like Oxalic acid occur in large ammounts in nature, is easily metabolized and dont damage the bees, others like coumaphos and fluvalinate is syntethic insecticides (pyrethroid and organophosphate) that is poisonous for both the bees as well as humans. You will probably be better off with the warre hive if you refuse to treat against varrao mites but the only downside of treating with oxalic as i see it is that it delays the bees development of natural resistance against mites (cleaning, hygene, predation etc.) . 

The positive thing about hives with frames is that they are easily inspectable and therefore much better for learning than keeping bees in a warre. 
For instance, when is it time to add another box? how would you know/learn if you dont have experience and cant open the hive to look? Is the hive in swarm mode? you wont know because you cant open the hive. 

I bough two hives last year, one was strong and the other was medium. 

The strong one was probably already in swarm-mode when we got it or we added another box too late - this resulted in a hive that was in swarm mode much of the season and when we finaly decided that we could not keep cutting the queen cells, we made a split. The problem was that after making the split, the bees in the queenless hive were not successfull at making a new queen from the open brood that were left. There were hatched at least one queen but it did not result in eggs so i guess it died or something, anyways, that hive was queenless for around 2 months and we had to introduce broodcomb from the other hive or else the colony would have died. The split were also queenless for a while as the old queen departed with a swarm. The hive with medium strength were stagnant most of the season, probably because we added a new box too quick and thereby cooling the hive and reducing the number of bees availavle for foraging. This resulted in a honey yield of 16kg total - other beekeepers in the area averaged around 40kg pr hive ;-) 

I would have never gotten these lessons if i went straight for the warre and i would probably fail year after year. I still need to keep my other hives (with frames), probably several more years as i realise im still a noob and will remain one for a long time still. You will probably do alot better than me but dont be afraid to make mistakes, everone startes somewhere.


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## BeeHoosier (Feb 21, 2016)

excellent info Pondulinus. I am confused about inpecting the frames though. I see where using frames in the hive may be easier to pull out since it has a rigid structure on all sides, but isn't it still relatively easy to inspect the comb that is drawn on the top-bar hives? Can't a keeper still inspect the combs? I know on warre's they typically look at the underside, but with top bar hives they can still be removed and inspected.


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## Pondulinus (Jun 24, 2015)

When using wooden frames, the wax-template is melted into wires that is drawn through the frame and the comb will typically connect with 3-4 of the sides in the frame. The comb will therefore be stable inside the frame even when it is full of honey or brood so that one can go through the hive without destroying anything. The comb connected to the top-bars in a warre will not have this stability and is much more fragile and harder to handle. The bees will also connect the comb to the wall of the hive and you have to cut it loose if you want to inspect it. Its by no means impossible to inspect a warre hive regularly but i think it is much easier to do this in a conventional hive with frames, especially when being a novice. you will most probably experience some "creative building" also, especially if the hive is not made properly, making inspections even more difficult. 
I dont look forward to the day when i have to mess around inside one of my warre hives...

Do you mean the horizontal top bar hives? I do not know alot about those but from what ive seen they are easier to inspect but the bees will connect the combes to the hive wall and you will need to cut it loose. So maybe that would be a good option for you if frames are no option. 

The ultimate hive for me though, if i ever get good at beekeeping, would be one of theese;-) 
https://oxnatbees.wordpress.com/2015/07/04/onbg-meeting-27th-june-2015/log_hive_1a/
Those log hives are so cool!


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## Sky (Jul 7, 2015)

BeeHoosier - 
are we talking about a warre or a KTBH with sloped sides? 

you can't really inspect the combs in a warre hive very easily.... in a KTBH, the sides are sloped, and the bees attach their comb less to the sides, so you can [more] easily remove the frames - in vertical sided top bar (likes a warre) they do attach comb to the top bar, but they also attach to the sides, and lacking a bottom bar before the next top bar below (because they are stacked, and there is room below - unlike in a KTBH where there is a floor) they will tend to build comb that is one contiguous piece from the top of the hive to the bottom. this means to separate your boxes, you need to cut them apart first with a guitar string (which makes a mess), drip honey all over the place, get the bees worked up, etc.... 

One of my first hives was a hexagon warre hive - it looked awesome - and the bees did really well - they grew fast and filled up 6 10 inch high boxes (equivalent of about 6 deep lang frames each) in the first year... 
what a miserable hive this was to "get into", I always made a huge mess, and always had a lot of pissed off bees buzzing me - so after a time or two I just didn't. my entire management plan was - pop the top, if there was comb in the top box, add another. 
the result was i had no idea what was going on inside. 
I also went treatment free (simply because I had no idea what a mite was, I was all new at this, I didn't know squat about bees) 

The following February I cleaned out the dead hive (mites-lesson learned [almost - I am a slow learner] ) - the upside was we got about 5 gallons of honey - the down side was no more bees. 

The comb went every which way, across the bars sideways and curved - we crushed and strained that honey just getting it out of the boxes... there was no "pulling one bar at a time"

I have since modified that design a bit and the center bars in each section are now frames. Soooo much easier, and i can take the hive apart to inspect with out making a huge mess out of everything, can take singles frames out, add, rearrange, split, etc very easily now.

I do think Warres are very cool and work well,and are probably more "bee-centric" than a box of frames, I have one, I keep it populated, but it is more for show than anything.... , 

For your first foray into beekeeping, if you want to really learn about what's happening inside, i'd recommend either a sloped sided topbar (horizontal) or a framed vertical hive. These two will give you far more options as you learn - most notable is easy access to "see" and learn what is going on inside. the bars/frames can easily be removed, rearranged, corrected, singly harvested, etc - this is not so easily accomplished with Warre's - 

Warres are really designed to be more hands off - prior to the varroa "invasion" any "common man" could have a hive (successfully) - just capture a swarm, dump the bees in and just let them do their thing - harvest a whole box, or add an empty box were the primary concerns...
The mite has changed all that, and as a beek you really need to understand what is happening "inside" to make sure this foe doesn't get the upper hand. It's possible to be treatment free - but it's not easy - you will need to be able to "get in there" and inspect, maybe cull drone brood, introduce brood breaks, or to apply other techniques for managing mites without chemicals - nearly all techniques require you to "get inside" for one reason or another.....etc - it's just not as easy in the warre style hive where everything can be glued together and the combs may not be perfectly straight. 

Starting with a lang may not fit your ideal image of "natural" very well, but you will sure learn a whole lot more, and faster when you are "hands on". 

If you have your heart set on a warre sans-frames - go for it... 

you will learn a lot, and will have fun - These hives can be tremendously successful - though today, with the challenge of mites, less-reliably than in the past (regardless of hive style). 

I personally like the ability to manipulate the frames and intrude on the hive without having to cut my way in....

Sky


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## BeeHoosier (Feb 21, 2016)

Excellent info and explanation. Based on some of that info I may be better off going with a foundationless Langstroth hive. That might be the best of both worlds for me. I really prefer the foundationless approach (don't introduce possibly contaminated wax, lets the bees draw there own comb, don't need to keep a supply of foundation etc...). I would probably learn more and learn it faster with a langstroth. Also after researching where and how to get bees it seems like nucs for a warre are really not that readily available. If I were to purchase a nuc or package or get a split from somebody, a langstroth would be much easier to make that transition since most people use langstroth hives around here.


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## johnsof (Oct 14, 2014)

I was initially attrachted to the Warre concept of minimal management, top bars without the expense of frames, "more natural" and all that. I started with two hives and installed packages and both hives immediately flourished and quickly filled two boxes with comb. But as I think many others have found, no matter how many empty boxes I would nadir, after a certain point in the summer the bees would not draw comb down into a third box, and quickly started backfilling. Both hives swarmed at least twice the first summer and were unable in the end to put up enough stores for the winter and I ended up feeding from Xmas on.
I like the Warre hive size very much, it is SO much easier to handle than the Lang hive I have but I found with using top bars the time to inspect and the mess I created was so very very time consuming and as mentioned already you end up with honey everywhere and a lot of very upset bees. If you think about those empty bottom boxes, how would you get bees to go down and start drawing comb when they really aren't that interested in doing so? Or, as far as that goes, if you supered how would you get them to go up into the top box? You need to have some drawn comb or at least some foundation and then maybe they'll start to fill out. You need to pull a full comb from one of the boxes. But with the top bars and the comb attached to the hive body and all that, well, it isn't easy, while it can be done like I say it takes so much time and trouble. And don't kid yourself, you WILL want to harvest some honey. But you'll only be able to cut the comb away from the top bar and then crush and strain and then you don't have any extra drawn comb.
I have now converted to frames and life is a lot easier. I cannot argue with the point about managing for mites but you could treat without what is really going on inside the hive or monitoring mite drops or something like that. But what you cannot do with top bars is easily monitor brood, brood space, backfilling and you cannot easily move comb around to reduce the swarm impulse or to get the bees to move into a new box. Oh, yes, it's really hard to look for queen cells, too.
I think the Warre dimensionally is great, I think that apart from ease of use overwintering is easier in a square box versus a rectangular box and the quilt box is genius, and I really believe that for a hobbyist, especially an older hobbyist or someone with only a hive or two in their back yard in town the Warre might be a better choice than a Lang. But the initial cost is higher because of the economies of scale favor the Lang.

I also have experimented a lot with different widths of foundation and using foundationless with only a starter strip. I can say without any hesitation that I will never go foundationless again any time soon. The comb isn't as "robust" without a foundation. Others will no doubt disagree but this is my experience. If for whatever reason you're worried about using wax foundation then use plastic.

Good luck and don't discount the Warre, just think about whether or not you can be an active beekeeper or an inactive beekeeper and if you can live with constant swarming and very little honey production, having a hive die out occasionally because a new queen didn't get mated, and so forth.


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

Johnsof,

Nope, I agree with you. I started with a Warre' hive and then transitioned them to a Langstroth hive.....Now I have both "Modified" Warre' and Langstroth hives......I like the size and effect of the Warre' hive (more vertical than horizontal) and I like the modular design of the langstoth. Now I use 13.75 x 13.75' boxes for my Warre' hives and I use frames.....this gives me the best of both worlds....but I still use the langstroth hive as I sell nucs and have to provide the industry standard for nucs.


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