# managing the Warre'



## johnsof (Oct 14, 2014)

That's the idea, that as you nadir the queen continues to move down and you can harvest from the top. The theory, as I understand it, is that the queen prefers to not cross over capped honey and so since typically you'd find the capped honey band at the top of the comb the queen will naturally go down. Having said that, for sure there are going to be some combs without capped honey and that's why the typical managed Lang user places a queen excluder under the supers, otherwise the queen will go up. Also with the Warré (if you do not have a queen excluder) then it is almost for certain that the queen will go up since the fixed top bars aren't easily moved around and the bees typically won't draw out the outside bars as well and there will be empty space she can move around in. With frames then you move the empty outsides to the middle and then you end up with a completely full box, you don't easily have this with the Warré, it seems to me.

To me, as much as I believe in the design and no matter how much I prefer this to the Langs, the inherent problem with the Warré is that they do not seem to easily - at least in all cases - want to draw out new comb past a certain point in the spring so the first year or so you are stuck with 2 boxes of drawn comb and they won't easily fill out additional boxes, no matter whether they need the space or not. You can move some drawn bars into a new box, but it just isn't easy to do it. So what you will have is that the queen will go up and down and then you get mixed brood and honey. Maybe the second year, when they want to draw out more wax, you can nadir 1-2 empty boxes early in the spring and more later if they need it and they will draw these out and the queen will be heading downwards. At some point you will find the top box without brood and then you can harvest.

That's the theory, anyway. For the most part I have converted to modified Warrés with movable frames for nadiring and keep the top bars only for supering. It is easier for me to make sure that the boxes are full of drawn comb and I can move a frame up or down to promote drawing out combs in nadired or supered boxes, and it is easier then to control the situations which would promote swarming. The advantages of managing the hive without the disadvantages of the weight of the Langs.

Take a look at The Warré Store website for a discussion about the queen and the brood and comb, it's quite good, I think.


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