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Anyone Keeping Bees in Colder Climates Using a Warre Hive?

 
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Location: Arizona & North Dakota
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Curious if anyone is keeping bees in Northern states of USA using Warre hives. How do they winter over? Do you make any changes to the design?

If you use a different hive, please let me know your thoughts on that!

Thanks for your help. Looking to get a start on bees this spring! Nothing too serious, but when I return to Arizona, I want to have the experience under my belt. (I am currently in North Dakota in Valley City. About an hour West of Fargo.)

Jeff
 
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Location: Lapwai, ID
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Haven't heard of anyone up here using Warre hives, but I like the design. Most people that keep proper bees around here are using langstroth hives, with screen and canvas bottom boards. Hives are kept up on blocks to promote airflow. Here, on the meat of the Green Bay/Lake Michigan sandwich, Autumns are wet and chilly, so if you don't have decent ventilation, your worker bees are gonna spend a lot of time in the hive as heaters/dehumidifier fans, which leads to less honey, which leads to utter carnage. We tried a top bar this year, but the landlord came along and smoked em out with a completely unneccessary junk fire about twenty yards away from the orchard, so no honey this year, or new info on survivability of top bar bees (there's an emotion somewhere between rage and depression that accompanies dealing with such total ignoramuses.) Looking at plans, though, I think a Warre hive could do just fine in the winter with an old horse blanket or two wrapped around it, so long as it was up off the ground, in a semi-insulated area with sun exposure; most of my friend Pam's hives get half or more buried by snow in winter, and she typically has around 75-90% survival. It seems to me that the key is in finding that sweet spot between insulation/coverage and air exposure/flow. But, that's just me. I'm sure somebody else around here knows boatloads more (hint hinting...)
 
pollinator
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Over on the yahoo Warré page there are folks who have Warrés as far north as Norway and Alaska
 
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Hi Jeff!

I keep bees in Warre' hives here Elburn, IL which is mostly west of Chicago near st charles and geneva.

These colonies overwinter beautifully....I think the design overcomes many of the Langstroth box winter challenges. The Warre quilt with wood shavings and dimensions seems to nip pesky condensation/wettness issues in the bud. I also keep my bottom screens open all year. Their varrhoa levels are super low.

The guy who tests our water supply keeps langs on site. He unfortunatly lost all 8 of his hives one winter, lost a 2 one year, 4 another.
Warre' no winter losses.

All this being said...I'm thinking about experimenting with a log hive in a tree, maybe golden hive.....and a kind of shelter open on the south. We have really bad wind problems here.

Do you have Warre's or just thinking about them?

Nancy
 
Jeff Rash
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Hello Nancy,

Thanks for the update and the advice. I am a brand new beekeeper, starting in the Spring of 2016. Looking for low maintenance, rugged bees that can winter over here in North Dakota. I am really worried about that actually. Lots of folks tell me about their disasters wintering bees. I think that's because of the 10 frame Langstroth hive, which has a very unnatural shape to it. (That's proved out by your friend's disaster.) The 8 frame medium Lang is actually pretty close to the Warre and I am thinking about going with that, just to keep things in a common size.

On a side note, did any of you notice how hard it is to get an experienced, local Beekeeper to teach you? I messaged all the local keepers and not a one called me back or returned my email. They just don't want to teach! But I found a fellow by the name of Don out of Georgia that's been keeping bees since forever. He went all organic in 1993 and never looked back. He's a great guy and easy to learn from. His methods apply to all bees, no matter what kind of hive the keeper places them in. (But Don dislikes the 10 frame Lang as very unnatural and hard to work with- both for the bees and the keeper.) He's a no BS kind of guy with hundreds and hundreds of successful hives- so he can prove what he teaches.

He gives out his advice for free and has a lot of videos out there. Most are handheld quality, but they are free and certainly contain plenty of knowledge! Just goggle, "Don the Fat Bee Man" and he will show up. I learned so much already form him that it's crazy! (And he did not charge me a dime.)

Don has treatments for mites, (varroa and tracheal) that are simple, natural and laughably inexpensive. If you are having issues, Don has got an answer- I have not stumped him yet!

He also has an interesting take on ventilation- let the bees do it. Don says just like us, that if we are hot we open the window. When we are cold, we close it. Bees will do exactly the same thing if you let him. He does state that moisture is an enemy though.

Lastly, Don hosts a Saturday Night Bee Chat at 8:00PM Eastern every Saturday! (Thank God, someone I can ask direct questions too!) Check his Facebook for details.

Jeff
 
Nancy Phillips
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Jeff.....I had NO support or help here regarding natural beekeeping, though lots for conventional. So I finally brought someone here from Oregon who is a biodynamic farmer and beekeeper. She did a consultation for me and it really helped. I am hosting her for a 2 day natural beekeeping class in October. (There is a flyer up under Regenerative Beekeeping thread).

I've really been lucky with low varroa count and not done any treatments.
 
pollinator
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I have one Warre hive and one Perone hive that I built that I am taking into winter, so I can let you know in the spring out it worked out. I'm in a very cold part of Wisconsin with temps that hit -30. If they can survive here, I think they can survive anywhere. It will be interesting to see how they do. The Perone hive is made from 2x lumber, where the Warre is 1x, but the Perone is much larger and that much space will be harder to keep warm I would think.
 
Jeff Rash
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Todd,

It will indeed be harder to keep warm!

If you want, PM me and I will let you know about a guy that gives out free advice via a chatroom. He's full organic since 1993, (gave up on "medicines" from chemical companies because of the expense and poor results) and he's got some amazing experience in bees and hive management. You can talk to him for free this Saturday night at 8 Eastern.

I would post the link here, but I don't know how they feel about that, as I recently had two apples "confiscated" for asking about GMO's and what the big ta do was. Don't want that to happen again, plus I am trying to work some sort of advertising exchange with this guy and the folks here at Permies.

Posting the link might be taken the wrong way and I don't want to mess up the opportunity to cross promote two sites that I have found to be of immense help. That being permies and my new found friends site where he gives out advice on beekeeping. (50 years he's been doing this and making a living!)

Jeff
 
Jeff Rash
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Nancy Phillips wrote:Jeff.....I had NO support or help here regarding natural beekeeping, though lots for conventional. So I finally brought someone here from Oregon who is a biodynamic farmer and beekeeper. She did a consultation for me and it really helped. I am hosting her for a 2 day natural beekeeping class in October. (There is a flyer up under Regenerative Beekeeping thread).

I've really been lucky with low varroa count and not done any treatments.



Will take a look!

Jeff
 
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Hey there - any updates with the 8 frame Lang?  I have a bunch of frames I inherited, and was thinking of refashioning the boxes to 8 frame, rather than trying to build Warre hives from scratch.
 
pollinator
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Before I start, I hope you realize that colonies that escape can find places with a pretty complicated design to raise their queen and make honey, like in between the studs of a poorly insulated building, or under a roof, and a few of them make it over winter sometimes, so I would not fret too much about the overall shape of hive boxes. This said, they have their preferences.
The main reason that Langstroth hives are more common is that there are more companies that build the wood ware. Most folks, when they are starting do not want to bother building one from scratch, [They want to be beeks, not carpenters, plus they  realize they only have a slim understanding of all the complexities of beekeeping] so once they have a couple hives, they cannot interchange with any other system of keeping bees and tend to stay with the Langstroth.
That is what happened to me. Since I do not know of any woodware company that builds up to Warré's specs, I retained the Langstroth.
Am I happy with the Langstroth? Not particularly: a full box of honey is a bear to lift at my age, and I'm resigned to pull frames one by one, which keeps the hive opened longer. As far as better for cold climate, well, because the Langstroth can contain a bigger volume, which takes longer to cool down, keeping all other variables the same, I would give a small advantage to the Langstroth, but only a small advantage: I still lose hives in cold weather. The trick is to keep the wood tight fitting and thick.
+ This said, the 12"X 12" of the Warré is more to a bee's liking.
+ Certainly, smaller boxes are much easier to handle, whether you are supering or harvesting.
+ Supering with a Warré is a bit of a bother because, to mimic what bees normally do, you have to super from the bottom since the natural inclination of bees is to hang on the top bar and build downward. That means lifting every box, then add one at the bottom, then replace what you just took off, keeping them in the same order. In a way, since the boxes are a lot lighter, it is not that bad and it makes the beekeeper keep better tabs on what's going on in the hive and prevents the bees from building bridges between boxes, so at extraction time, things come apart more easily. This guy has found the trick: He built his own hive lifter so he can super from the bottom without disturbing the hive as much.

The improvements I would make to the Warré for the cold:
In a colder climate like mine, if I were to design boxes, whether Langstroth or Warré:
1/  I would make the wood twice as thick, or whatever I can lift full without getting a hernia.
2/ I would *add* handles on the outside, rather than live with this handle notch: the pine box is 3/4", which is already thin. At the notch, the thickness diminishes to less than 1/4". When you have strong winds and temperatures that can stay at -35 to -40F for a week, the bees go through their stores awfully fast. I've had many a colony with big stores die of hunger in the winter because they became lethargic and could no longer get at their stores. Commercial beeks prefer the notch because the hives are easier to transport long distances when there are no handles protruding. If you don't move your hives, there is no good reason to lose this wood thickness. Having protruding handles also give you a better grip to separate the boxes
3/ Assuming that the wood can be precision milled, [big assumption]I would create a slight bevel on the top and the bottom of each box so the rain could shed better. This would also create a larger contact surface between the boxes, making it harder for the wind to slip in. Between tight fitting boxes, a bee can only cement so much, so it might actually make it easier to separate the boxes, especially if you use a hive lifter.
4/ Because of the system for hanging frames, the front and the back of each box also has a rabbet, with a much narrower thickness. I'd love to remedy that. Keep reading.
5/ Assuming I go with a bevel, I would *add* a 1/4" bar notched at the proper spacing to have 8 frames at the top front and back of each box from which to hang the frames instead of rabbeting. This would add wood thickness instead of losing it.
6/ The frames also could take a couple of modifications: Instead of the shoulders at each top of the frames, I would make a rectangular frame [much easier to mill] and drill a hole for a nail on each side. Each frame would then hang by 2 nails instead of these shoulders which are a bear to clean when you are replacing the foundation. The bees cannot glue the frame to the box this way. Another advantage of hanging by 2 nails: I once had a hive that lost its level: one side of the hive started listing: The bees were uncomfortable and built the honeycomb only on the "high" side. With nails, the frames are "self leveling", so they always hang absolutely vertical.
7/ I built my own extractor assuming that I would use medium frames. That leaves a lot of unoccupied space in the 55 gallon barrel I'm using for an extractor. If I were to switch to a Warré style, I could make the frames taller and give them a  quarter of a turn in the extractor: Instead of hanging as they were in the hive, I would arrange a way to hold them by the nails, with the bottom of the frames towards the outside of the barrel. I might even fit 2 layers of frames since each frame is narrower than in a Langstroth.
That is a lot of changes but the big advantage of the setup is that the bees would be warmer and more comfortable in the winter, in a cold climate; with taller frames, you would not have to super as often.
The Warré also has a special roof with slanted sides to shed rain and snow. There is ventilation at the top. In winter here, this ventilation might be a bit too much, but there is a quilt box that is incorporated and in which you can put moisture absorbent material: Wood chips, old quilt pieces etc. to keep the heat in and moisture out.
In my Langstroth, in the winter I keep the bottom opening only wide enough for 2 bees to go out at the same time and I do the same thing at the top, under the roof/moisture box.
Either way, my hives are under a bee shelter so they never get rained on. This prolongs the life of the woodware, plus I can extract even if it rains a little. In the winter, I add heavy quilts, making sure I don't plug the ventilation holes.
 
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