Source: https://beebuilt.com/pages/warre-hives
HISTORY OF WARRE HIVES
Abbe Emile Warre developed the Warre hive over 50 years of research, culminating in what he liked to call “The People’s Hive” in the early 1950s. He studied over 300 hive designs, ranging from straw skeps to the modern Langstroth hive, analyzing their ease of use and suitability for honey bees. He focused on simplicity, ease of management, and natural qualities including the building of natural comb (rather than pressed foundation) and the retention of nest scent and heat.
He frowned upon the invasive, tedious micromanagement of individual frames and combs as practiced by most beekeepers in his day. He found it optimal for bees and keeper that to manipulate the hive box by box only a couple times a year, rather than comb by comb every couple weeks. This is key to the beekeeping philosophy that corresponds with Warre hives, and it is a tremendous shift away from the common practices used today. Less bothering of bees means more productivity by and less disturbance to the colony.
Warre would typically add a couple empty boxes to the bottom of the hive in the spring and remove the top boxes from the hive (full of honey) in the fall. This allows for something few other hives offer: The continual cycle of new comb into and old comb out of the hive without the destruction of the precious brood chamber, as each year prior to winter the bees move the excess honey stores to the top of the hive. This removes the pesticide-laden comb from the hive every couple years, making for a healthier, happier colony.
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A Warre hive is a vertical top bar hive that uses bars instead of frames, usually with a wooden wedge or guide on the bars from which the bees build their own comb, just like they do in nature.
The Warre (pronounced: WAR-ray) hive is named after its inventor, French monk Abbé Émile Warré. He studied hundreds of different hive styles and settled on this one as the most ideal for bees and beekeeper. His design focused on simplicity, ease of management, and mimicry of honeybees’ ideal natural environment. This hive is a vertically stacking top bar hive that incorporates natural comb and the retention of nest scent and heat. We’ve used these hives since 2008 and find them to be the most hands-off of any hive design.
Warre hives are ideally suited for the beekeeper looking for a low-cost, low-maintenance hive design. With a Warre hive, there is no need to frequently inspect the colony, purchase an expensive honey extractor or use chemical-laden foundation. Management of Warre hives calls for adding extra boxes to the bottom of the stack (called nadiring), causing comb to be regularly harvested and cycled out of use. This prevents old comb from being reused and therefore ladened with environmental and agricultural chemicals and toxins.
In our mind the Warre hive is the ultimate design for natural, chemical-free beekeeping, and we’ve had tremendous success with our own Warres with little to no maintenance.
Advantages of using Warre hives
• Ideal for hands-off beekeepers
• Simple management by the box rather than by the comb
• Lighter boxes
• Optional windows
• Foundationless
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Warré Beekeeping
Advice to a complete beginner to beekeeping
