Did anyone here tried the Warre's hives?
Did anyone here tried the Warre's hives?
...If you can meet Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same...
Sure, I did, and you can too.
Just take some standard boxes, and put in some top bars from
unassembled frames. This magical assembly of wooded parts is a time
machine that can take your beekeeping more than 100 years backwards
in time!
Honestly, when even beekeepers in Kenya scrap their "Kenyan Top Bar
Hives", start using Langstroth gear, and realize significant enough
increases in production to turn beekeeping from a "subsistence" into a
"cash-generating" occupation, why would anyone who could afford
Langstroth gear want to mess around with obsolete equipment designs
like Warre and TBH?
Read this:
http://www.honeycareafrica.com/files/faqs.php
The biggest problem with Warre hives is what happens when you leave
the hives alone for a bit during a flow, and they attach the combs to
the sides of the boxes, just as colonies will attach combs to the sides
of rafters when they set up shop between a floor and a ceiling in the
rafters. Other than that problem, it is a classical Top-Bar Hive, except
that you can super and take advantage of the habit of bees to expand
their colony in a vertical direction (a la a hollow tree), something that
TBHs never allow.
Me, I like technology, and after about 100 years, I think that the
jury is in - Langstroth deserves all the credit he has been given.
If I bought Johann Thur's Nestduftwarmebindung claims, I'd be
closing down entrances year-round rather than opening them up
in spring.
Not to worry about heat and "hive odor", I have it on good
authority that the bees will make more of both!
Why has beekeeping attracted so many wack-jobs for so long?
Warre may be outdated from the commercial beekeeping point of view. However, there are some interesting ideas for people dealing with winter loses.
...If you can meet Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same...
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