# Best technique to harvest honey from a Warrè?



## Kennethansin

We live in the Boston area, have two full boxes and one being filled with honey.
I plan to harvest the top box over the next couple weeks. Which technique do you recommend for a first time beekeeper?


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## Harley Craig

aren't you pretty limited to crush and strain? Does your warre have frames?


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## Kennethansin

I think that's the simplest way but there looks to be a good amount of nice comb for the picking.


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## Teabag

I just took a box off a warre yesterday that has been undisturbed for 2 years. It was rammed full and weighed 44lb. It was old brood comb and took hours to extract by basic, simple crush and strain. I now have forearms like Popeye, but I will certainly consider other options next time. Still, its a nice dilemma to have.


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## Kennethansin

Thanks Popeye!
Did you smoke the bees down, use an escape board or another preferred technique?


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## Teabag

Just a little smoke under the top cloth to persuade them to move down. I never get all the bees down and always end up with around 200 refusing to budge. I normally leave the box on its side and they do eventually leave. I always worry about robbing at this stage but other than using a leaf blower or similar, I can't think of a fail safe way of doing it. Escape board is probably a good way to go but have heard others report of reluctant bees with this method as well.


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## Oldtimer

Per your first post, by "technique", I'm not sure if you are asking how to get the bees out of the box and the box off the hive, or if you are asking how to get the honey out of the combs?

If it's how to get the bees out of the boxes then yes, a leaf blower is ideal. Take the top off the hive & give them a good smoking to encourage most of the bees down. The put the top box on the ground on it's end, with the direction of the combs vertical not parallel with the ground. Check the bottom of the box to ensure it does not contain brood, then blow the bees out with the leaf blower. They are dislodged from capped honey fairly readily, uncapped comb they hang on a bit more tenaciously.


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## odfrank

I helped with one last year that produced about 100 4"X4" cutcombs from 1st year combs. We used a blower to vacate the bees and a cappings spinner to get the bottled honey of the crushed comb leftovers. Another three only produce 38 lbs and a few cut combs with the same methods.


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## Houstonbees

I did pretty much what Oldtimer suggests. I laid the box on its side, combs vertical, bottom facing the hive. I used a combination of smoking/leafblower to get them out of the box. This was after leaving an esacpe board for 24 hours and was only partially successful in removing the bees.
After that, crushed the combs and placed in a two very big pots and heated very GENTLY on the stove to melt the wax and release the honey. Scooped of the leftover detrious and allowed to cool. Then scooped/lifted off the wax leaving behind 23lbs of beautiful amber colored Tallow tree honey! By next year I will have a home made comb press.


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## Kennethansin

I think I'll follow your guidance. Probably try the bee escape board a day before, then try the smoke and leave the box on its side technique. D you keep the box right next to (almost touching) the hive, or leave it 3-5 feet away?
There's definitely a lot of honey in the top box and seems like the last week or two have spurred a new flow to round out the lower two boxes. 
Thanks.


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## odfrank

Kennethansin said:


> I think I'll follow your guidance. Probably try the bee escape board a day before, then try the smoke and leave the box on its side technique. D you keep the box right next to (almost touching) the hive, or leave it 3-5 feet away?
> There's definitely a lot of honey in the top box and seems like the last week or two have spurred a new flow to round out the lower two boxes. Thanks.


That method is an invitaton to have your crop stolen by robber bees. Use a blower.


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## Charlie B

Ollie,

Show them your high quality production blower video so they know which end of the blower hose to use on a dumb ass Warre' hive.


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## odfrank

Charlie B said:


> Ollie,Show them your high quality production blower video so they know which end of the blower hose to use on a dumb ass Warre' hive.


Charlie, this is the Warre Forum. Haters should stay out. One would think that someone like you from San Francisco, surrounded by folks of numerous different sexual orientations, would have a more open mind about using different types of hives than you do. But then again, possibly you are unsure of your own sexual orientation, and that is why you are threatened by those of us who try different hive venues.


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## richr58

I just did my first harvest from a hive from last spring, chop, crush, press between to cutting boards in a cotton sack, what a mess, but a yummy mess, left the clean up of the bowls to the girls, about 40 feet away, 2 new hives this spring, not quite full enough to harvest.

I must say that it should not matter what type of beekeeping a person does, if it works for you do it, if you don't like what your neighbor does, ( or the other guy on this site ) look away, and enjoy your bees. This stupid anger between lang and warre is just that STUPID. 

I enjoy watching my bees every day, I enjoy not having to disrupt them weekly, and so far they are doing great.


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## DocBB

May I suggest *this album*

the device is a fruit (mainly apples) crusher


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## mahobee

Great album. What's that funky separator tool, second row, second picture?


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## thehackleguy

Harley Craig said:


> aren't you pretty limited to crush and strain? Does your warre have frames?


You can make cages for the comb and use an extractor


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## Lostfrog

mahobee said:


> Great album. What's that funky separator tool, second row, second picture?


It's wire wrapped around two handles so you can "saw" through any comb that might be attached to the lower box's topbars since you want to detach anything before lifting the box to avoid comb failure.


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## Charlie B

Lostfrog said:


> It's wire wrapped around two handles so you can "saw" through any comb that might be attached to the lower box's topbars since you want to detach anything before lifting the box to avoid comb failure.


Sounds like great fun!


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## BernhardHeuvel

I keep a decent number of Warré hives for ten years now and never needed a wire tool to seperate boxes. Don't know what your bees are doing. If you nadir, you let them bees build right down to the floor and wait until the lower tips of the combs get roundish before nadiring another box. Once the combs are grown and finished, the bees seldomly fully attach the boxes to each other, after nadiring another box. Also inspect the hive by dismantling it every month, keeps the boxes moeable, too.

It is just a misreading (or not-reading) of Warré, if you add too much boxes at once. There is only one chapter in his book describing a method for distant apiaries which you visit one time per year. But this is not "the" Warré method although it is widely known as "leave-alone". But that's not the truth. Read the darn book. Saves you a lot of trouble. And wires on handles and cut-sawing comb...


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## BernhardHeuvel

This is the finished comb, the bottom edge is roundish or flat. Has a lot of capped brood. Viewed from below:









On the other hand, fresh comb with pointy edges: 


















Too early to nadir if the combs are not finished.

While in "real beekeeping"  the advise is to super in advance, you wait until the bees finished the comb and filled it with lots and lots of brood when nadiring. Once the combs are flat as shown in the first picture, the bees do not add much brace comb between boxes.


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## thehackleguy

Bernhard,
Thanks for the info, I do have another question. If you are letting them get that full, do they tend to swarm more? 

That is the way my bees have made their comb, nice and rounded at the bottom.....I just figured I had smart bees


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## BernhardHeuvel

Of course they will run out of space faster and there is more tendency for swarms. You either let them swarm or you split by the box. It is all in the book. You can download it here:
http://www.users.callnetuk.com/~heaf/beekeeping_for_all.pdf


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## thehackleguy

I have the book, I have read most of it but I need to finish it and go back over to work out the details. It just seems like everyone panics about swarms. I'm planning on splitting but I still don't have a feel for it yet as this is my first hive. Thanks!


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## BernhardHeuvel

One does not have to fear swarms. You catch the prime swarm, put it in one Warré hive box and let it grow until winter. You go into the swarmed hive and remove all but one queen cell. The bees usually swarm the day the first queen cells are capped. So you have eight days until you see the cast swarms. To make sure you don't get cast swarms, you break all cells except one the day they swarmed. 

I know the date - around mid May here - when bees swarm and I used to work in the garden. When I heared the bees swarming, I runned for a water hose and sprayed the bees in the air with water. Like artificial rain. (Do not drown them, though...) The bees get wet and soon settle down either on the ground or in a tree nearby. Make sure you plant short fruit trees in front of the hives.

I also caught swarms with swarm catching nets right in front of the hive. As said, install the swarm into a new hive.

Now, you can either break the surplus swarm cells. Or, if you have nice, gentle and productive bees, make use of the surplus swarm cells by cutting them out and put them with some bees into small mating nucs. You can raise them as a backup, using the best queen you get from the mating nucs and sell or give away the other queens.

This way you keep the working force and the want to swarm is zero after that. The old queen in the swarm is usually replaced during the summer with a younger queen. The good thing about using swarms for reproduction is, you get a lot of hives to choose and select from before winter. Keep the good ones, rule out the others.


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## BernhardHeuvel

Howto harvest peanuts. 

Put the hive box on it's side, combs pointing up and down. Some smoke to run the bees off, so you can see the queen cells. You find the cells in a Warré hive mostly at the sides or in the bottom box, if that box is just half-drawn.


















Those double or twin cells are difficult to cut out. To cut a queen cell, hold the comb with one hand, cut with a long sharp knife well away from the cell and with lots of extra comb surrounding it. I use a hive tool as a spade to pull out that queen cell. Queen cell goes into an insulated box for transportation. 









Queen cells in all stages. This is a cup filled with royal jelly. 









This queen already has hatched. If you work the hive sometimes a couple of cells pop open at the same time. Sometimes the queens wait inside a cell for the signal of a cast swarm. When working the hive the disturbation makes them go out and see what is going on. 









Mating nucs with bees and cells go into the dark and cool cellar for three nights minimum. After that the mini-colonie is forged together and act like a hive. I place those nucs in a spot that is aside from the main activity of other hives. And into a shady spot since they swarm when getting too hot. 









To harvest bees for mating nucs you either shake of the building cluster of the bottom box. Or you split up the prime swarm for this. Or you use a bee escape board between honey supers and brood boxes. The bees cluster below the bee escape, where you can harvest them by shaking them into a bucket.


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## BernhardHeuvel

You do not need many bees to run such a mini mating nuc. Just a cup full of bees. Some impressions after the queen started to lay:

Eggs.









Brood in some stages. Not capped yet.









On all three mini topbars. They got two more topbars. 


















Bee bread. 









Cute tiny combs.


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## BernhardHeuvel

As a swarm beekeeper you need to know the swarm signs. A colony prepares swarming weeks before they actually swarm. Usually you will see first drones of the year plus 16 days = date of swarm. So, drones do emerge but they need time to ripe and produce viable sperms, so the bees start queen cells soon after the drones came out. 

First thing you see are queen cups. We call them "playing cups" (Spielnäpfe) in German, since the bees build them and tear them down again for a while. This is how they look like:










Note the thick rims of that cup. If the rim is thick, the bees just play. But if the walls of the cell gets thinned, the bees get serious:










You soon see the cup shining inside (polished) and you'll find an egg very soon. Once there is a larvae inside and royal jelly, the bees are in swarm mode. You will see pollen in the combs covered with nectar. Shiny polllen. The queen cells get a fresh net of white wax on the outsidered, we say the cells are hammered with fresh wax.

You can see the following signs of a hive swarming soon:

1) You see the bees under the comb, clustering at the bottom of the hive. Also you find a lot of bees on the walls and in the deep floor. (Or hanging out at the front entrance.) In observation hives, bees suddenly can be seen on the windows. Covering the windows. In swarm mode they seem to "avoid the comb" the days before. If you see a cluster at the bottom and many drones on it, the hive will swarm the next day. Usually you see capped queen cells soon, most times the bees swarm right before the capping:










2) The days before swarming, the bees are pretty busy. But the day they swarm they are silent suddenly - just to burst out later, once they warmed up for swarming.

3) Put your ear on the hive and knock the hive wall - if you hear a long humming answer, they are about to swarm soon. (Within a week or two.) If the answer is short hiss, the bees do not want to swarm.

So by looking at the signs, and of course by turning the hive boxes over on their side, and looking into the comb from beneath on a weekly basis, gives you enough clues to figure out the date when the bees will swarm. The answer lies in the hive, so this is the place you look into. You prepare for the swarming, take some days off and make holiday in your garden, catch the swarm. 

Make use of the surplus queen cells and install the swarm in a new box. 

It is not so difficult, it is just a little different. I prefer swarming over splitting when working fixed comb hives, because it is easier. Even if you loose the prime swarm, you remove all surplus cells and you're fine with it. And as long the hive doesn't throw cast swarms you get a decent honey harvest from that hive. Multiply, select the best bees before winter and do not keep weaker hives. Instead shake them out, combine them with the hives you keep and harvest the honey of the weaker hives, too. 

Bernhard


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## thehackleguy

Bernhard,

Thanks for taking the time to do this, I don't have a mentor yet and seeing the actual pictures with explanation is a HUGE help! Right now you experienced beeks here on the forum are my mentors and I appreciate it. :thumbsup:


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## Hunajavelho

Very good description and photos. The question is; if you let them build the combs ready as described before nadiring, then what is the distance to the bottom floor?
I assume if I use a floor with higher edges the combs will then be built lower than the the brood box, making it impossible to nadir without cutting the combs shorter...


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## jadebees

If you learn how to remove 1 top bar at a time from your warre hives you will be able to use a bee brush quite readily. I suggest to practice because you can take a half a box if that's all there is suitable to harvest. Mmmm, spring honey, a good reason to take 1 or 2 bars, and also to learn how to detach the comb from the sides.


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