Hi Kitta.
The story really starts with Abbot Warre who, after field-testing as many hives as he could, decided that an internal footprint of 300mm x 300mm had something 'special' about it - that the bees really thrived well within this compact space. And he wasn't the first to discover this. So - the standard Warre and all variants of it: Russian 'Alpine', Delon etc - all have the same internal footprint.
When Warre concluded his experiments, he settled on a box depth of something like 400-440mm (I'm going by memory, now), but his assistants complained that such boxes were far too heavy, and so he simply cut them in half, giving a box depth of around 210-220mm. I guess these could be called 'half-height' boxes, with 2 being required to form a brood chamber suitable for overwintering.
Warre also experimented with the use of frames, but eventually settled on the use of top-bars only, with the combs invariably becoming firmly adhered to the box sides, thus requiring an 'L'-shaped bladed knife to cut them free when harvesting honey. This was to be his final design adjustment, and is still the way that purists keep these hives today - which were always intended to be 'back-garden' hives for the rural French.
Ok - this is where Roger Delon comes into the picture. Delon was a commercial beekeeper who kept some 300 of these hives on the slopes of the Alps. Rather than staying with Warre's top bar system, he devised a method of using wire frames within the same 210-220mm boxes. He found that the wires are for-all-intents-and-purposes 'transparent' to the bees, and didn't present the same kind of 'restrictions' imposed by wooden frames, with their mandatory beespaces.
He also simplified the top of the hive, so that rather than having a breathable quilt above the boxes, he used a sealed and insulated crown board, which seems to have been very appropriate for those Alpine conditions.
Next on the scene are some enterprising Russians, who read about Delon's successes with his form of modified Warre hive and, with typical Russian ingenuity, decided to halve the height of the boxes once again (so now they are 1/4 the height of Warre's original plans) at around 108-110mm. The internal footprint still remains the same at 300mm square. Delon used his hives in The Alps, so the Russians called their's 'Alpine Hives'.
Apart from this box and frame height change, in all other respects the hive is pretty-much as Delon used - but what the Russians are doing very differently however, is running their hives as if they were Nationals - with Q/X's, honey supers, embossed foundation, and all the rest.
So what has happened is effectively a transition from Warre's original concept of a back-garden 'People's Hive' - cheap to make and only requiring 2 inspections a year - through Roger Delon's wire frame modifications allowing the hive's use for commercial yet eco-sensitive purposes - through to a totally commercial operation (albeit one run on a shoe-string by impoverished Russians), by the use of shallower boxes: 4 to make a brood chamber, with 1 for a super - but all staying with Warre's original 300mm internal footprint.
Hope this clarifies the muddy waters at least a little ...
LJ
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Originally Posted by Little_John
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