The Accidental Warré

So you know for some time I have been meaning to get around to building a Warré hive. Well as it turns the bees have grown a little impatient.

Before I had bees and was playing around with the different hive designs, I made a Warré... sort of. The Warré was built from old fencing boards which were more than a little warped. Part of the beauty of the Warré hive is the build simplicity. Warré recommends using butt joints rather than any more difficult means of forming a box. However, if you have wavy and/or bowed wood you end up with severe gaping at the edges, and a box that rocks on a flat surface. At least mine did. I completed the build as a dry run and dumped the boxes in the apiary just in case I wanted to salvage them at a later date. Well as it turns out bees aren't quite as picky about my wood-working skills as I am. On a quick trip to the apiary last night to check if the swarms I had housed were still there I noticed bees going in and out of a knot hole in one of the Warré boxes. This is right next where I put the national box swarm. In fact the national is standing on one of the Warré boxes to raise it off of the ground.

I am going to have to build them a proper Warré Hive (with windows of course) so they can over-winter *sigh* just need to finish the chicken coop first. These bees shall henceforth be known as Mata Hari and the sneaky bees.

It just goes to show all these rules we have for how to site bait hives to catch swarms are based on probability. I am obviously sitting at the outer edge of the bell curve for swarms. If there are enough swarms about and they need somewhere to go, they'll go in practically anywhere. It is odd that I lived in this village for years and I swear I never saw a honey bee. Then I caught a swarm at the end of last year and now I am at the point where my wife is saying "...do you really need any more bees?". This is colony five! Any more turn up in the bait hives I have out will be gifted to new beekeepers in the making. To coin a phrase from mylatinnotebook "... I do not want a sixth hive... I do not want a sixth hive...".

UPDATE: Bees in another bait hive... This does NOT count as a sixth hive...ish. They will go to a new beekeeper at my association.