# Warré, Better?



## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

If you have been reading abby warre book, you will find that he was not a big proponent of using thick boards. So his view were not wrapped around being like a tree as much as what effects do things that you do have on a bee.

Not being critical but just adding to those "various thoughts are in play" that you mentioned.

Cheers
gww


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

BillSF9c said:


> Seeley and Morses' drawing shows a 6 or 7" thick tree-wall. Wood is about R1 per inch.


That particular drawing was *representative* and intended only to show the overall principles of the relatively few samples found. It was drawn for an academic paper, and was never intended to become a blueprint for the building of beehives.
As ROB Manley describes in his book 'Honey Farming', some tree cavities are split from top to bottom thus providing next to zero insulation - but the bees inside still manage to survive ok.

One major problem with rounding the internals of a square hive is that the frames/combs then need to be of unequal length - which is fine for the 'bee-haver' (not my term - don't like it much - but useful in this instance), but not a very practical proposition for the craft of beekeeping.

If the idea of the importance of hive insulation(*) can be dropped, then square or oblong footprint hives become theoretically realistic again (especially when housing deeper frames) - as the egg-shaped cluster which is formed in cold weather can do so across several combs within such a box: the shape of the box itself becoming fairly irrelevant, although the volume and orientation of it do appear to be relevant factors.

Before human beings came on the scene, 'natural' cavities (meaning cavities occurring within the natural world) were few and far between, and so would have been highly desirable for all organisms wishing to get out of the weather: tree-living reptiles and birds, as well as honey-bees.
LJ


(*) Do bear in mind that insulation does not equate to warmth (which is a very common error). Insulation buffers extremes of heat and cold, but doesn't in itself generate either.
The commonly-held idea that tree cavities were warm, cosy places needs to be judged against the mechanism of their formation, which is either by continuous wet-rot of the heartwood from rain ingress (in the case of cavities at height), or from rising damp in the case of cavities formed at ground level.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

"Boxes don't kill bees unless you set them on them."--Aaron Moe


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