Sam Comfort Inspects A Warre Nuc
At the Treatment Free Beekeepers Conference, one of the hive styles Sam Comfort from Anarchy Apiaries talked about was the Warre hive. A Warre hive is a vertical top bar hive. This hive is shaped like a box and when you want to add another super on you nadir it or put it underneath the existing hive (as opposed to the Langstroth where boxes go on top). The bees build the comb down into the next box as needed. When you want to harvest honey from this hive you cut the top box off with a wire and as Sam says “Then you run.”
The benefit of Warre hives over top bars is that you leave them alone. You let the bees be bees and swarming is encouraged. With top bars the hives need to be inspected about every 10 days to prevent swarming and comb problems. You can learn more about Warre hives by reading the book Beekeeping For All by Abbe Warre. You can get it free here.
Sam has made some changes to the Warre style hive by making boxes which are smaller and only 6″ in height. He uses these box style hives as nuc boxes to raise bees. He also does not use quilt boxes which are used in Warre hives. In this video below Sam is inspecting one of his Warre nucs, then he transfers a top bar nuc into the Warre nuc by shaking the bees into it. He also talks about how to increase your honey production with nucs.
This second video was in a previous post but I have included it again here. It shows Sam Comfort inspecting a top bar nuc and then stealing its field force to give it to a Warre nuc.
Here are some photos of Sam inspecting the Warre nucs at the conference. Sam uses a tile as the outer cover for the nucs and a type of insulation for the inner cover which is foil on both sides with bubble wrap in between. Click on a picture to open the gallery and click on the arrows to scroll through the photos. If you click on the picture the gallery will close. If you are reading this in an email or a reader and the gallery or videos do not display properly, please click on the post to view the gallery and videos on the website. Enjoy!!
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