# Warre production



## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

You might ask Sam!
spit ball numbers
a natural amount of drone comb (20%) IE foundation less cuts your honey production by 1/2 -Seeley 2001
It takes about 2lbs of honey to draw out a deep frame- Oliver 2016
the net if full of "numbers" for the amount in a deep frame, but given Ian runs like 1k+ and all deeps his numbers seem wood seem to be a good start


Ian said:


> This year we averaged 40lbs net from a deep. We generally like to target 30-35 lbs


take the high for fun (4lbs a frame) and it says crush and strain costs you about 1/3 your yeild

so that suggests 100X.5X.66 = 33 lbs 

but then there is all the honey left stuck in the wax (rince in warm water and make mead?) 
Then there is 
lost opportunity costs by not having extra drawn comb for evaporation space if there is a stong flow
and the smaller colony size 
love to hear if any one has some "real numbers" to compare to my spitball...

In my main yard I have been splitting the langs so hard I don'd have a sold number.....last year my nehobor said he made "bout 300lbs" I would guess by watching maby 13-14 were alive in the fall and some were 1st year hives, I did 32# between 3 KTBH. 
But different stocks and management, I would guess if he did more more mite management his production numbers would be higher.:waiting:


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

An alternative approach would be to adopt the Russian 'Alpine' Hive protocol, with 108mm tall boxes, top bars with wire 'frames', foundation, extracted supers and so on ...

Warre-style hives don't *have* to be restricted to the crush and strain approach. 
LJ


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

little_john said:


> An alternative approach would be to adopt the Russian 'Alpine' Hive protocol, with 108mm tall boxes, top bars with wire 'frames', foundation, extracted supers and so on ...
> 
> Warre-style hives don't *have* to be restricted to the crush and strain approach.
> LJ


+1


I am thinking to build one based on a shortened Lang mediums.
So that would be based on 6 1/4 tall inch frame (for convenience and external compatibility).
For me, I am looking for better ergonomics for the bee and the beekeeper.
But also looking for harvesting early honey somehow.

While I do not have personal experience in this area yet, I already posted lots of references on this subject - lots of people have been doing CVHs (Compact Vertical Hives, e.g. "alpines" and the many variants) for a while now.
It it seems the CVHs are compatible to Langs/Dadants in the honey production, reportedly. 
In certain years and places, CVHs are doing much better than Langs/Dadants - due to better spring growth conditions they provide during cold springs and so on.
In fact, CVHs are better for early honey crops - due to the small vertical increments you get to work with.


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## viesest (Jul 13, 2016)

GregV said:


> Compact Vertical Hives


Compactness is because of heat retention, but heat retention can be (also) achieved by isolation and longer super can be made compact by inserting (isolated) follower board (in winter time). Then, the advantage of longer box is, it has more space for brood expansion and more space for winter stores, the tolerance is higher.

(Example of horizontal expansion: https://www.bienenkiste.de/doku/bauanleitung/summary/index.html)


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

Just out of sheer curiosity I ran a Warre for two years. My Warre adventure was just one single hive so factor that in how you consider my experience, which is very little. I made four boxes, a Warre style bottom board, quilt box, 1 gallon top feeder, and Warre style gabled cover.









By the numbers. My Warre had the standard 30 cm square 21 cm high boxes. My state requires that all beehives have removable frames. My frames had sidebars but no bottom bar , giving me a comb face area of 502 cm[sup]2[/sup], or 78 in[sup]2[/sup]. 









A Langstroth medium frame has a comb face area of 87 in[sup]2[/sup]. A Langstroth deep frame is 136 in[sup]2[/sup]. A fully drawn Warre comb is 89% the size of a Langstroth medium frame and 57% of the area of a Langstroth deep. The Warre has 8 top bars and is 71% the total comb are of a 10 frame medium super.

OK, that's the numbers, but my actual yield was lower a lot lower than 71% of a medium super. If you manage as Abbe Warre did you nadir boxes, that is you place empty boxes on the bottom. Wax production is at the bottom of the stack. The bees should store honey as brood hatches out above, migrating the brood nest down. I found that the bees used boxes 1, 2, and 3 for brood, keeping in mind that with nadiring, box 1 is not fully drawn and when box 1 is drawn you nadir an empty box. 

Partially drawn lowest brood box on bottom board.








So at the end of September this is how my hive typically was

4: (top) Honey, no brood, but not completely back filled from hatched brood. Frames 1,8 filled and capped, top half of other frames capped, the rest was uncapped and still being back filled. 

3: Brood in the lower half of frames 3,4,5. Frames 1,8, filled with honey, 2,7 have a small amount of brood, pollen, uncapped honey and nectar. Honey dome above brood

2: Brood. Honey and pollen stores on frames 1, 8. 

1: Partially drawn frames, brood, pollen.

Because of that I could never harvest the equivalent of an entire box. At least because I had frames I could pull the outer combs in box 3 which were usually full and capped and exchange them for some of the incomplete frames.

Each year my crush and strain harvest from the Warre was about 20 lbs. Because I was using a modified Warre with frames I did make an attempt at extraction. I ended up with a colossal mess in the extractor. I suppose if you had a basket to support the comb you could be able to extract instead of crush and strain.

Beekeeping is highly regional, and with a longer season I probably could have gotten box #1 drawn out and maybe had more brood moved down and more capped honey above.

The single biggest problem I encountered was equipment compatability. My other hives are Langstroth. If you had a lot of Warres that might not be an issue, but it is something you will want to think about. 

I have exited my Warre. The gear is now stacked up alongside my garage and I don't have any plans to use it again. I may sell it. This is just one person's curiosity driven experience, there are some people on here with lots of Warres who get production from them. However, having played with one, IMO, there is a reason that Langstroths became more popular that Warres.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

viesest said:


> Compactness is because of heat retention, but heat retention can be (also) achieved by isolation and longer super can be made compact by inserting (isolated) follower board (in winter time). Then, the advantage of longer box is, it has more space for brood expansion and more space for winter stores, the tolerance is higher.
> 
> (Example of horizontal expansion: https://www.bienenkiste.de/doku/bauanleitung/summary/index.html)


I am in total agreement.
A well designed compromise box can have it both ways - 1)vertical and compact wintering configuration and 2)expandable summer configuration.

One common denominator, however, is a shorter top bar - a better fit for "square" and tall configurations when need to compress.
Layens/Warre/Delone top bar sizing is about it.

Interesting personal discovery I made last year - a typical Lang 10-frame box is just about right when 1) used with frames inserted the "short-way" and 2) the follower boards used to build a "square" and tall internal envelope for the cold season. 
So, for example, 6-8 frames sandwiched between the follower boards will act similar to the Warre-type tree hollow in winter. 
In summer, this "tree hollow" will be expanded horizontally as needed.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

JConnolly said:


> ....
> The single biggest problem I encountered was equipment comparability.......
> The gear is now stacked up alongside my garage and I don't have any plans to use it again. I may sell it..


Those Warre frames should fit nicely into standard Lang 10-frame boxes with very minimal mods (the short-way).
I would not sell anything and use them right back in.


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

Clayton Huestis said:


> As a langstroth user that averages 90 - 100 lbs per colony in upstate NY. What type of production should I expect from a warre type hive vs a langstroth hive?


I'm not sure that making a direct comparison of honey-yield between the Langstroth and Warre Hives is necessarily legitimate, fair, or even useful ...

Warre hives were designed for a specific user - the archetypal French peasant. As such, these hives were required to be cheap and easy to build, require a minimum amount of beekeeping time (typically 2 visits) during the season, and were intended to be located in cottage gardens with no particular emphasis being placed upon the availability of forage.

The more precision-engineered Langstroth Hive, on the other hand, was designed for the out-and-out commercial beekeeper where frequent intervention is practiced, and intended either for static use within rich areas of forage, or for mobile use where it's construction was suitable for transportation to similar forage-rich areas.

So - they are, and were always intended to be - very different animals. A much fairer comparison, in my view, would be to compare BOTH honey-yield AND beekeeper effort during a season. (I'm reminded of Doolittle's experiment with a 4ft Gallup Long Hive where he pulled over 500lbs of honey from that hive during a season, in contrast to his apiary average of around 160lbs - but this was achieved by extracting twice a week - a commercially non-sustainable activity)

If a person really needs a higher honey-yield return on their investment - then simply keep more hives within the same 'field', measuring honey-yield per acre, rather than honey-yield per hive. IMO, of course.

It may be useful to examine the methods of those Russian commercial beekeepers who seized upon the Delon variant of the Warre beehive with great enthusiasm, and proceeded to manage this hive in more-or-less the same way as Roger Delon. The reasons behind their choice no doubt involved the costs of manufacture and upkeep - and it may be significant that they have not since expressed any ambitions of changing to an alternative hive design.
LJ


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

According to:


> "Northern" hive.
> https://naturalbeekeeping.ru/lib/safronov2.pdf


Managing this "Northern" hive (frame-based Warre variant) in the authentic Warre methodology yields about *20lbs per year*:


> When adding hive boxes from the bottom, the honey productivity is about 8 kg per family (one box is 25 kg once every 2-3 years). This is compatible to traditional log-hives.


This also agrees with JConnolly above:


> Each year my crush and strain harvest from the Warre was *about 20 lbs.*


However, the "Northern" hive author notes that managing the same in more commercial way is more productive 
(i.e. - adding the boxes on the top and using the QE); the author omits the actual #s as I think he does not use this approach as too "un-natural" to his philosophy:


> The adding the boxes from above, through the excluder, makes it possible to increase the honey productivity of the family, but creates more stressful living conditions for it.


In all, the CVHs can be managed just as Lang/Dadant multi-body hives as they are the same in principle - multi-level movable box management system.
It is simply about managing 5-8 smaller, lighter boxes per a unit vs. 4-5 larger, heavier boxes per a unit.
Or managing 5-6 smaller units vs. 3-4 larger units on the same pasture.
Your pick.

Per my observations of the CVH keepers, they have been able to easily harvest early honeys in situations where traditional Dadant keepers (and for sure horizontal keepers) - never could.
The reasons are obvious to me now, once I saw several videos - the small frame CVH allows for isolation of small compartments vertically, *separated *from the brood nest (possible to harvest early and in small batches).
The large frame does not allow for such isolation - thus resulting in early honey mixed within the brood nest area on the same large frame, since they tend to store any early honey just above the brood (impossible to easily harvest).


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## viesest (Jul 13, 2016)

GregV said:


> One common denominator, however, is a shorter top bar - a better fit for "square" and tall configurations when need to compress.


Also, shorter fondation less top bars (frames) are much better compared to longer.


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