I received some Warre hive photos from Brenden recently. Brenden lives not too far from me in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. He built a Warre hive last spring and populated it with bees from a shook swarm. His hive is located in his city backyard where there is plenty of flowering plants, flowers and trees for his bees to forage on. Brenden told me that his bees filled two hives boxes with honey comb in five days!
As you can see, Brenden chose to build his hive out of 3/4″ plywood coated with a weather and water sealant. Plywood is inexpensive and durable, however it does contain glues which may over time emit gases into the hive. Brenden said that does not bother him. I happen to be a little leery of plywood, though. To each his own!
It was very hot earlier this summer here in NW Oregon. Brenden’s Warre hive had so many bees in it that they created a beard at the hive entrance during the high heat. Honeybees will do this to help cool the hive. My bees also bearded during the hot spell, but not as energetically as Brenden’s. Brenden told me that he thought his bees were going to swarm, even though they had plenty of space to build honeycomb. He snapped this photo of the bee beard. That is a lot of bees!
There is so much flora and fauna in the city that Brenden’s Warre hive is now five hive boxes tall! Each box is packed with honeycomb, honey, pollen, nectar and honeybees. I bet that his neighbors appreciate the pollinating that the bees do for their flowers and gardens. Who knows, maybe they will be interested in keeping bees themselves? Having a beehive in every backyard would go a long way to increasing the numbers of honeybees in our cities and suburbs.
Thanks to Brenden for the great photos!
Wow…what a great website you have here.I will visit this often…thank you
Nick, I’m puzzled. How could he possibly know that his bees drew two boxes of comb in five days? How could he know that they needed another box added at the bottom? How can you tell this stuff, when you can’t look inside the hive? Help?