When I started beekeeping I started with warre and top bar. That didn't go all that well. I had always figured that if a swarm were to move in I'd use them again. Sadly I have never seen a swarm. So they sit unused. I recently bought some of the double mating Nucs from Mann lake. I bought some extra frames. As I was looking at them I realized that I could cut down the warre hives and make use of the hive bodies. I took pics but Photobucket seems to be down. Will try again later. Either way it's a little shorter and skinnier. It can hold 8 frames. I had enough extra to fill a box. If all goes well it may function as a nice mating nuc. I've got a bunch of boxes. I'm thinking I may buy some more frames and use them. Think that if I were to stack two boxes that I could rear queens with them?
Bush,
Sounds interesting.
Looking forward to seeing the pictures.
Jim
Tinypics's down as well - something very odd is going on today ...
LJ
Bush
I just built a warre, You said it didn't go well when you started with one. Can you elaborate?
First of all the green agenda of modern beekeeping being the devil is bupkiss. I have done better keeping bees in a conventional manner than with tbh and warre. Bees will move down but not very fast. Bees do move over but not efficiently. The hives are terrible to inspect. TBH was more reasonable than warre but still terrible. Warre boxes are small. Lack of frames was excessively prohibitive. Feeding was a disaster with tbh. I made feeders with warre hives that worked well enough however. Supplies are also not easy to come by whereas Mann lake is within driving distance.
If I were to ever get an excessive amount of bees I'd maybe try them again now that I have more experience. I would probably first retry the warre hive just because I believe in a vertical hive arrangement. I'd definitely build or buy frames. I'd keep it more in a typical Lang fashion.
Bush
I have three lang hives right now. I like the langs. I have two long langs that I am just letting sit there (hopeing a swarm will move in). I now have the warre cause I wanted to see if it was easier to build then the langs. It was still hard. I have two of them setting out in my yard and will put lemongrass oil in them and hope a swarm move in. I might never use any of the hive but the langs which I am stil building but tried to build a couple of easy to build stuff just incase I got behind and needed some place to put a swarm.
I don't buy anything and don't have anything that I can't build.
I am too new to have any convictions about any kind of bee keeping but do like the langs so far.
Thanks for answering my question.
gww
Quote from: Bush_84 on November 04, 2016, 01:18:10 AM
[...] As I was looking at them I realized that I could cut down the warre hives and make use of the hive bodies. I took pics but Photobucket seems to be down. Will try again later. Either way it's a little shorter and skinnier. It can hold 8 frames.
I do hope you manage to find an acceptable alternative use for those boxes.
A few years ago I built two 'Russian Alpine Beehives' which are basically Warre's with half-height (110mm) boxes and Delon frames (made with wire sides and bottoms). I soon discovered that the bees adored living in that narrow chimney format, but from a beekeeping point-of-view they were a disaster: the wire frames didn't do anything to prevent side adhesions - the small combs still became firmly attached to the box sides regardless of whether there was a precise bee-space there or not; inspections soon became nil - simply because they were just too much hassle; and the lack of inter-changability between Warre combs and my regular boxes meant that these hives began living an isolated, stand-alone life within the apiary.
I kept those hives going for two seasons, after which I pulled the colonies by tie-wrapping the Delon frames under plain top bars to fit into my regular hives. I also pulled my one and only Kenyan Top Bar Hive - for much the same reasons - the body of which I then re-built into a dual deep-framed 'Long Hive' which has since performed extremely well.
I'm very grateful that you started this thread, because until today I hadn't yet found a solution for those 'Warre' boxes. I've even tried giving them away without success, and many of those boxes are currently employed as hive stands.
Like yourself, I'd been considering cutting them down to make something smaller, but the amount of work involved always promised to be disproportionate to any benefits gained ... but it was while composing this reply to your thread that a light-bulb went off inside my head (!)
So this is my current solution ...
I'll glue two boxes together to give me a 220mm height (adding a batten later to give 225mm with a Top Bee Space), and then cut the boxes as per the red line as shown here:
(http://i64.tinypic.com/f4o0eg.jpg)
Then I'll insert a suitable piece of timber - somewhere around 4.5" - into that cut and remake each box. It'll also be necessary to extend the rebates (rabbets) inwards with 22mm thick wood, because of our long frame lugs, but apart from that it looks to be a fairly straightforward 'bodge'.
The only solution to fitting the existing Warre roofs onto these extended boxes, will be to make a pair of feeder shells with sloping sides, to give a Dutch or Flemish roof effect - but it should look reasonably ok, if a little unusual ...
Again, thanks for starting this thread.
LJ
(http://i993.photobucket.com/albums/af52/dpboll/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_1410_zpsfpgf6wxp.jpg)
(http://i993.photobucket.com/albums/af52/dpboll/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_1411_zpsp8y4fsda.jpg)
Not the best pictures I know but it gives you an idea of what they look like anyways. I could easily winter one of these with a shim and mountain camp dry sugar overhead along with my winter shed.