Tractor Warre Lift

I used my tractor warre lift for the first time today. The hive that has a layens transfer box with 8 Layens frames in it was sat on a floor which I wanted to change for one with a larger footprint. To achieve this I had to move the hive about half a metre to the left and set it on some concrete blocks that I had previously levelled. It worked really well! I connected the strop to the front bucket of the tractor, lifted slightly and reversed slowly in crawl gear whilst my wife steadied it by hand. Then forward to position over the new floor and box and then gently lowered onto it whilst my wife guided it to sit correctly.

click to enlarge


I put the roof back on and will now wait until April when I will harvest the top Layens box. This transfer box is about equal to two warre boxes so it will be interesting to find out if there are still any brood in it. The bees hardly noticed they had been moved and didn't bother us at all.



I set down the original floor by the entrance so that the bees on it could walk back home.

Lifting a Warre

Time is getting on and the point where I will have to lift my warre hives to add bottom boxes will soon be here. I have two options, I could remove each box in turn and then set down on top of the new box and restack them. One of the main management points about warre hives is that you do not disturb the nest atmosphere, so that method is out! I am left with lifting the whole stack in one go and I am not physically capable of doing this by hand. I have seen some of those hive lifters that other warreors have built and was thinking along these lines at first. Then I thought about my simple lifting system in Sweden. How could I utilize a similar system here? Answer, my tractor lift bucket will be the power source. Position tractor bucket over hive. Screw down a clamp onto front of the bucket. Hang a lifting strop from the clamp and attach strop to hive. I screwed 4 eye bolts to corners of warre boxes. I bought 4 quick release shackles from the hardware store and a washing line. Washing line cord is surprisingly strong. Cut 4 lengths and attached them to the shackles with the knot shown in the photo below. I then used some of the cord to make a circle to tie the other ends of the shackle cords to. I used tape to tuck away all the loose ends. The rope circle will hang from the clamp screwed to the tractor bucket. I can then lift the whole stack slowly with just one finger.

Spring has Sprung

Our winter which lasted all of a couple of weeks of coolish weather and in which the bees managed to fly most days seems to be over. The almond blossom has started and we noticed these wild small white narcissus. Only about 10cm tall, white and very beautiful.



I am pretty sure the bees don't visit them



They certainly visit this one though and I don't know the name of it. It is a straggly plant with lavender coloured 4 petal flowers.



Not much to look at but the bees love it. The leaves have a kind of milky sheen to them and the leaf joins the stem. I would appreciate it if anyone recognises it letting me know it's name.

I have started making up my bait hives for the coming swarming season. My swarm season starts late February until end of April. This year, I am going to put out the usual motley crew of different boxes but I am going to add the ones that will from now on be my standard bait hive. A double warre box, set up as mentioned in my last post within the layens shell. A double warre is the perfect volume for a swarm being 36 litres. I have successfully baited swarms in 25 litre boxes but the 36 litre size will be more attractive to the scouts. The best attractant apart from volume is tempting them with some really old brood comb. I kept back some old comb just for this purpose. This one gnarly old comb was cut into two and waxed onto warre top bars. I took my time waxing these combs onto the bars using hot wax and an artist brush to make sure every adjacent cell was bonded with wax to the bar on both sides.



I repeated the waxing on a second bar.



I set the combs with the bars with a blank bar inbetween them. This is important as these combs are oddly shaped and do not match each other. This is how it looks from underneath, you can't really see the bar inbetween them but it is there.



The other tricks I use to bait swarms is to put a drop or two of Lemongrass oil in the hive to make it smell good to them. Together with the aroma of the old comb it should be irresistable. The yellow tub is a gel form of the same stuff that you smear outside the hive to give them the hint of the nice smell that is worth investigating.



My final trick is to paint white around the entrance to give a good contrast so that the scouts know exactly where to go. This really works!

More warre boxes and wax bead bars

I used the last of the wood I had brought from Sweden to make a further 3 warre boxes. I made the top bars for them from the old kenyan top bars. I can get 3 warre top bars from one kenyan top bar, so little is wasted. I have been waxing foundation starter strips into kerfs of the top bars but I thought I would try something else.

Varrex a member of the NBN forum uses an old wood glue container to bead beeswax into the kerf of top bars. I tried a year or so ago and failed miserably. It was either too hot and just run everywhere or too cool and plugged up the spout. I thought I would give it another try.

I put the glue container with broken wax chips into my homemade solar melter.



After a few attempts I got the hang of it! Tilt the bar slightly whilst pouring from the spout down the kerf rather than squeezing the bottle. Allow the molten wax to run down the kerf.

I hate waste! I think the throwaway society is one of the modern curses. I have 12 of these now redundant Layens hives just sitting around. After thinking about putting a warre inside WBC lifts, thanks to Christofer in Sweden, I wondered could I somehow use these Layens for something similar. I can and here is the plan. These Layens are one piece hives with fixed floor and roofs. I had to take the floor off two and a roof off one.



The floor is simply two boards with a central ventilation grill stapled to them.



I fixed two stout pieces of wood reclaimed from redundant kenyan hives as support feet using 8 large screws. I routed an entrance into one side of the floor.




The warre sits on the floor set back a little.



The Layens with both the roof and floor removed is set over and around the warre boxes.



The layens with just the floor removed sits upon the other layens. I screwed some cuff pieces around where they join so that no sideslip can occur.



There is room inside for a stack of exactly 4 warre boxes. Another tier could be added to bring it up to six and so on ad infinitum. There is no room for a standard warre quilt but the extra insulation in the layens roof and a square of carpet may suffice in my climate. So it seems several of my objectives have been achieved without much expenditure. The only thing missing is the aesthetics that a WBC hive has. Oh well! You can't have everything and I may still do that one day anyway.

Adam's Apiary

I was asked to provide a link to the photo I mentioned in an earlier entry about WBC hives. I have been given permission to reproduce it here. You can see that the WBC is a really nice looking hive. Not only that, but it is what everyone associates a hive to be like. I certainly think a warre would do well in this arrangement.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Pressing Honeycomb Video

Small Cell & Crossing the Great Divide.

We were discussing natural comb building on the yahoo warre group and again on the NBN forum. Other beekeepers were saying that after just one season of bees building comb foundationless they were finding cell size in the brood nest at 5.1 to 5.2 and even less. Well I measured as much comb as I could this year from all the deadouts. They built consistently at 5.3mm in the brood areas. I never found anything less than 5.3. Now Stefan in Las Palmas who is a Dee Lusby disciple and therefore small cell advocate maintains that to get small cell the comb spacing must be 32mm. My Kenyans were all 35mm and my warre were the standard 36mm so he may have a point. This may also be part of the reason I saw so much comb curving in the kenyans. Scott from the yahoo warre group has said he puts nine 20mm wide bars in his warre hives instead of eight. I did the maths and realized if I did the same, I would get 32mm spacing. So this batch of 4 warre boxes and all subsequent boxes will have nine bars.

These photos show exactly how I achieve the spacing.

The first photo shows an end spacer of 9mm and the first bar pinned into place, the 12mm spacer with the screw as a handle and the next bar also pushed up and pinned.





This photo shows the 9mm spacer removed and the 12mm spacer put into the next position.




The next photo shows the next top bar being slid along before pinning into place.




All bars now in place and pinned in position. The pins are 'gimp' pins or what the Americans call frame nails.




Four boxes pinned and ready for the top surface of the top bars to be laquered with pure linseed oil.




These and several others will have a couple of months to dry and air before use.

In these next photos, you can see I have waxed small pieces of comb between the middle top bars, set on top so that when it is put under the warre hive it will crush slightly between the combs. This is to act as a bridge which the bees will be able to cross from the comb above. Bees are reluctant to cross a divide and have been known to swarm through lack of space even though there was an empty box below!

Another lost colony

The cutout from my log cabin didn't make it I am sad to say. I thought I had the queen and sufficient bees to keep them going with some feeding but I may have damaged or lost her during the transfer. I noticed the hive I put them in was attracting a lot of attention from robber bees even though they had a very small entrance. When I checked inside, there were just a few bees remaining plus the robbers on the goods candy I had put over the crown board. I laid the crown board with what remained of the candy upside down on the table and just let the bees go for it. Here is a very small video from this morning with most of the candy gone. Goods Candy is just honey mixed with powdered sugar and you can see the bees somehow taking the honey yet leaving clumps of sugar. This shows quite clearly what they prefer to eat!



Over the last few days I have been making up spare warre boxes, quilts, floors, roofs etc. I have been dismantling the now redundant kenyans and utilizing the materials, wood and screws, to make some of the above. I will be giving each of my surviving hives an extra box, possibly in February if the weather is kind.

With my comb collapses and warre blow overs this year here in Spain, I have been thinking of ways to improve the situation. I had considered a large beehouse similar to the one in Sweden until I saw a photo of some WBC hives in an English garden which looked picture perfect. By utilising a larger footprint floor and WBC style lifts and roof around a warre, several objectives are reached at once. Shade, insulation and a more stable floor. The aesthetics of these hives is also to be considered. One of the disadvantages of a WBC hive, namely the extra work involved with removing and refitting the lifts, is not a problem with a warre system as they are rarely disturbed. The main disadvantage as I see it is the extra material and work required to make them. Perhaps the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I will ponder this.....