Saturday, June 11, 2011
I also checked up on hive #5 since they were close to full when I moved them on the 5th, I was surprised to see they had drawn out one whole frame from empty in only a couple days, they also seem to have filled out all of the frame space left over from changing over from the TBH, this means about one third of each frame, thats about 4 frames plus reorienting too their new environment all in about six days. I'm excited about this kind of speed since it seems faster then my old tb hives.Before I closed up I added a box to the bottom of this hive for expansion, this is supposed to allow them to keep raising brood without cooling off since they are already at the top of their space. In a natural colony bees will build from top down and move their brood nest to new comb as brood hatches, this is how warre hives are run. I plan to run them in a hybrid way, increasing from the bottom for comb renewal and managing their honey space instead of harvesting whole boxs.
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6 comments:
Sam,
I'm a bit interested in the Warre hive, but one thing makes me curious. How, physically, do you go about adding a new box to the bottom when you have a stack of, say, 4 or 5 hive bodies? Since the comb in the hive can attach to the top of the frames in the box below, separating them without destroying comb sounds very difficult. And there's no way I could think of lifting more than one box full of bees and honey at a time. I know you're using full frames w/out foundation, but how is is done otherwise?
Well, even with frames lifting three or five boxes at ounce is daunting, I found one idea that makes this possible, basically its a mini crank lift, looks like a dolly with sliding forkes that slip under the handles, this is moved by a rope that is reeled up on a turning shaft. Separating the boxes is mostly easy since the bees wont build comb if they are backed up against the floor (top of the next frame) if the boxes are stuck, one just runs a thin wire between the boxes slowly cutting the boxes apart. Warre doesn't touch his hives more then twice a year. I will be using some warre practices and some others based on my observations of bee behaviour.
Sam, I thought you were suppose to add a box on top as the queen moves north and not south. Is that incorrect? I rotated boxes on our hive and moved the top to the bottom because it was emptier and the girls just weren't doing anything with it. Our middle hive body is plum full and always seems to stay that way.
If you build hives to sell, let me know. I am interested.
As with most things there are many ways to do things, I am experimenting with warre hive so I thought I would give his idea of bottom increasing a whirl, one has to be careful though not to increase this way at the end of the year as they might not move down and just store honey in the bottom box. The idea behind bottom increasing is to allow the bees to stay warm in the upper boxes while building downwards. Bees in nature tend to build downwards, although they will build any direction that is open so sideways up down forwards ect, One thing I have noticed is they like to store honey above their broodnest.
Thanks Sam for the info! I am beginning to think my bees may follow this downward system. I'm going to have to start experimenting as well. My bees do NOT know how to follow a manual. LOL!
What your bees haven't read the instructions? Mine always do what they are told... ^o^
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