Here goes
Warré underway
by
, 11-06-2013 at 07:25 PM (16325 Views)
About 2 weeks ago, I set up my still empty Warré as a bait hive. As usual with me, there was a pile of junk nearby, and part of this was a dilapidated nuc. When the first swarm arrived, it chose the nuc. Thinking that the swarms may well prefer nucs, I decided to put a nuc and the Warré side by side and take whatever offered itself.
The nuc is about 30 litres and has 4 frames of the most foul comb that I could find.
The 2 Warré boxes have a combined 36 litres capacity. I removed all the top bars from the bottom box, and left 6 in the top box, each with a wax ridge along the underside. The other 2 bars were cut down from Dadant frames with a large triangle of old black comb on each. The idea of this, apart from attracting the bees, was to encourage them to build parallel to them.
Well, yesterday a new swarm arrived, and chose the Warré, so things are under way. I really like the last photo. The Warré has legs, so this is the first time I've seen the bees in a swarm moving up from the ground and making a chain. Same as inside when wax making. In fact,earlier, the mass of bees under the hive was just lots of chains.
I closed up the entrance just before nightfall, and this morning moved the hive to my main apiary.
.
Checked them this afternoon, and all was going fine