Hot humid and hot, did I mention its hot? I have been watching the weather network online, my region is supposed to be 35c feels like 46c! I can't imagine working in a bee suit on a week like this in full sun, that would be getting dangerous.
I had to move my last tbh into a warre today so I got up before the sun and finished before eight am, even small colonies do not like being woken before the sun rises, they get cranky and take it out on the cause of their vexation.

This weather does give me the opportunity to do a simple photo experiment on warre hive bearding. I will post the results in a few weeks.

Finally my apiary is converted into warre I have seven now, three were queenless  in spring so I requeened them with italians from california the last and least of which I moved into a warre today. One is a new colony from Ronnas house, three are survivors from last year.

I am currently working on a lift / dolly, I got the idea from a german site that sells these things professionally built. Its a very simple device that looks like a dolly with a block and tackle, a sled on rails and a single wheel for load stability. Its powered by a cordless drill so one can raise and lower the sled without letting go of the handles, leave it to the Germans.  :)  I think every beekeeper needs one of these lift devices even if you only have three hives. Why lift dead weight that most unions would consider much too heavy for a safe working environment.

On the fourteenth I moved two of my "Italian queen" top bar hives into warre hives, since the morning and evening weren't too hot I was able to get two of the stronger ones moved over, the last one will get moved in a week, this should give them enough time to prepare for winter if not I will feed them in late august.

The picture above is of "Hive Number One's" queen, she is laying and still acting the part even though I chased her all over Ronnas log house. She isn't marked and is producing mixed offspring so even if she isn't ferrel she probably isn't from a breeder I love her colors though such a nice shade of amber.

One Italian queen hive moved with the "quilt" propped back to allow the bees to find their new home. I put all the brood and comb in the top box so it was easier for them to fan at this location, once they had settled down I closed up the top leaving the bottom entrance open of course.

Picture of my new Californian Italians fanning at the new hive location.


It was Soooo hot today, supposed too be worse tomorrow, bees will clump outside their hive when the temperatures are this high especially if there is a good flow. The warre system seems to work much better then some other hive systems, I have noticed they only beard when it is very hot and humid, my tbh's would beard like crazy even when it was cool with what looked like the entire hive, I even found some comb under the lid last year from this excessive bearding, they also wouldn't go back inside at night when the temperatures receded like my warre's are doing. The bearding is from humidity inside the hive, one cause is simply climate another is harvest. If the bees have a nice harvest they have to dehydrate the nectar into honey, this causes a climb in interior humidity levels, if it happens to be hot and humid outside as well then they can't keep the hive cool since their evaporative cooling system isn't as efficient, this causes some of them to wait outside for the temperatures to decline inside. I'm convinced a bottom entrance vertical hive is better for climate control then a horizontal hive system, I'm also convinced the square hive boxs are making a difference with better temperature control, but as they say the proof is in the pudding, production and wintering, will be the proofs.

Look my thirty day old Italian bees are starting to forage! I couldn't believe it, foraging age is supposed to be about forty days this makes these girls ten days early. I put the new queens in on june eleventh since it is now july tenth that's about twenty-nine days. I'm very pleased with this since they should be ready for winter when it arrives.

Number one (aka Ronna's hive) is already removing the string I used to tie comb onto my frames, I can't wait to see what they have been up to.

This is a swarm moving into Ronna's nice log house, she managed to get a picture of this event in progress. They where uninvited though so she called me to evict them.

This is a before picture, eg. before the cutting, prying, tearing and general smashing.

This is what I saw once all the demo was done. The swarm was only six days old and already they have built almost a square foot's worth of comb, bees in swarm mode are very fast comb builders.

About a swarms worth of bees in my bee vacuum's inner cage.

These bees are getting the VIP treatment, here I am levelling their hive stand (needed for foundation-less hives if you want straight comb)

Gathering all the parts for assembly.

Place both hive bodies on the stand (plus base). Also before I place the quilt and outer cover on I release the queen since there are already a lot of bees inside.

I have tried a few different methods for getting bees from my vacuum cage into their new hive but this works the best, I open the base of the cage and lean it against the new hive's entrance so that there is a clear path for the bees to walk inside, the queen and more bees are already inside the hive, so the rest of the bees in the vacuum cage smell this and start marching in, really cool to watch. It can take a few hours though.

Hive number One, formerly know as Lazerus hive, is now host to Ronna's bees, the only thing they share now is the number.

Number one's neighbours, number one is the second from the right.

I looked into my warre hives yesterday just for a progress update, #5 is moving down into their new box (shown on the left), their old box is probably almost three quarters full of honey. When I removed the fabric cover I saw honey comb and drones, a sure sign that they are storing honey in the upper box (drones love to hang out around honey comb), the frames were hard to move so I don't know how far they have moved their broodnest, this box was the deeper kind so the frames are harder to manipulate. This proves that bees will move down if given room bellow, I believe they move whatever way is open but they prefer storing honey above their brood, I also observed virtually no bearding during our plus thirty days with the hive in full sun all day and with humidity close too eighty percent, even the smallest top bar hive I had last year would beard to the point it looked like all of the bees were outside, I think a bottom entrance helps the bees cool their hives better, this plus the way my outer lids are designed gives an air space below the wood and above the quilt.
 
When I started building warre hives I didn't want to cut frame shoulders so I use set screws, an unintended side effect of this is the frames get less glued together since the screws are the only parts of the frame that touch. With my new frames I started pre-drilling the set screw holes in each frame to give a uniform placement, in the above picture you can see all the screws are placed in the same position. I place the set screws in the side of each top bar at the ends where the "bee-space" between the frame and the hive body wall are. This prevents the problem of screws gouging comb when removing frames, it also allows the bees to crawl under the screw into the rabbet between frames, so nothing can hide there eg, wax moth or hive beetle. The picture above is with the new set-screw placement and the one bellow is with the old placement.

Hopefully all this doesn't sound like bragging, I am just pleased that this system is working so well, I love innovative simple ideas especially if they mimic nature at her finest!

Shown right is the old brood box getting filled with honey, notice the comb is closer together then brood comb, this is very similar to what you would see in a feral hive. There is hope for a honey harvest this year!