The Bees Knees - A Warre Hive

Keeping Bees in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Well, the bees are ordered and should be ready for us to pick up in May from a local supplier here in Nova Scotia. The province does not allow any importation of bees except for queens from Hawaii, NZ and Australia so all new hives here are started from locally raised nucs. Even bees and equipment from other areas of Canada are not allowed so as to help stop the spread of diseases and pests. A nuc (nucleus) is basically 4 frames of comb with brood (bee larvae) that are growing plus some honey stores, pollen and several hundred worker bees to look after it all. If a queen is not included in the nuc she'll be in a little cage attached to one side where the bees can smell her and are getting used to her. This is a good start for any hive. Bees will release the queen from her cage by eating her out (the cage has a candy plug) or if it's a plastic cage then the beekeeper lets her out. She quickly begins laying new eggs and the population of bees can take off like crazy. A young queen can lay upto 2000 eggs per day, that's an amazing number and usually happens during the spring build-up where a hive can increase in number from your nuc of several hundred to over 60,000 in the space of just 6 or 8 weeks. It does depend on the quality of your queen, availability of food and the available space within the hive, but you'll know as soon as the brood are hatching because your hive will suddenly get much busier. If the bees are hungry they'll raise less brood. If they're short of space then they'll likely think about swarming. So it's a delicate balance. This (top right) is a Warre hive with the 2 winter boxes and 2 summer boxes all stacked together to form a beautiful and practical hive.

Don't panic if this all seems like a foreign language to you. All this basic beekeeping wisdom can be learned from reading and there are some good books out there. And joining your local club can be terrific too. Once you've got your book knowledge, bought or made your equipment, registered as a beekeeper with your province, state or county, and ordered your first bees...there's nothing else to do but learn from hands on experience and from observing your bees. We've found that you can learn a lot about what's going on inside the hive just by watching the bees as they come and go from the entrance. But we're by no means experts...and I myself am particularly nosy, so when we built our hive last time we included an observation window. Then I can peek to my hearts content without really disturbing the bees or taking the hive apart.

If you've followed our blog for a while you know that In BC we used both Langstroth and top bar hives. But now we're in Nova Scotia where the weather is different, hotter in summer and much colder in winter. So we're re-evaluating the benefits of both styles. Personally I like the natural approach to beekeeping that's favoured by the top bar hive but a horizontal hive won't make it easy for the bees to cluster or get their honey stores when the weather is very cold. So we've decided on a compromise...the Warre hive. The Warre hive is pictured at the top of this post. At the left we can see a Langstroth hive super (box) containing the frames upon which the bees draw out the comb and store honey and raise brood. 10 Frames fit snugly in a super with enough room for the bees to climb around between and do their work. But if left alone to build naturally, bees will make their own combs without any help from humans and they'll make this same space called the 'bee space' between their combs whether built in a hive, a tree or a skep.

The Warre hive is a very low maintenance hive consisting of boxes that use top bars in place of frames. The basic principal is that since bees build new comb downwards, you place your new boxes on the bottom of the existing hive in the spring and then in the summer after the main honey flow you remove the top box or two that's full of honey. The advantages are that you are removing older comb from the top of the hive and so removing any build up of pesticides contained in the wax, the bees raise larvae on the newer comb near the bottom so the top boxes should not have any larvae in them at all, you don't have to move and jostle the brood combs so you disturb the bees far less, the hive maintains it's own smell and is in a more natural environment (simulating the inside of a hollow tree). I like this idea because it's easy to build but also, unlike a Kenyan (horizontal) top bar hive, the bees should be able to form a tight cluster and overwinter better due to easier access to their food and an insulated 'blanket' layer on the hive and the fact that heat rises and the bees can cluster in a smaller space at the top of the hive. I know that some beekeepers do wrap their hives in insulating blankets but that can cause problems with moisture building up in the hive so it's never fool proof. Ventilation is really important. In an ideal world Steve and I would move all our hives to a central location for the winter such as an unheated garage that would still allow the bees to be cool enough to hibernate but out of the wind and wet and away from marauding bears.

There are lots of free plans for making your own Warre hive including these ones. And while you're there at the Bee Space website, check out the original book written by Abbe Warre about his experimentation and study of different beekeeping hives and methods. There is a lot of good info about using Warre hives both as a hobbyist and commercially so be sure to follow our progress this coming year. We think that this allows for the bees to build their combs naturally and yet at the same time offers ease of management and a natural environment for them. After all ... mother nature never intended for bees to be making rectangular combs or eating white sugar syrup during the winter. Oh yes that's one good thing to point out...if you do have to feed a new or starving colony syrup, use only white granulated sugar. Don't use brown sugar.

Here's some basic info on how a top bar hive works, hope it's helpful. Please feel free to leave a message or comment with any questions you have about bees or keeping bees in Nova Scotia and I'll be happy to point you in the right direction. A lot of management styles are personal preference of course so whatever works for you is what you should stick with. Keeping bees is really interesting and can be very rewarding too, but we enjoy watching them pollinate our flowers and the neighbourhood trees and gardens so we know they are helping out our food security too. It's a win win situation. And if we're lucky, maybe this summer we can catch a swarm of bees and add to our apiary naturally. If you are in the Annapolis Valley and happen to see a big ball of bees hanging off a tree branch we'll be more than happy to come get the girls and give them a new home! Swarms may sound scary but they're docile and just looking for a new place to live. They won't hurt you if you just leave them alone.