More on Warré’s People’s Hive

More on Warré’s The People’s Hive

Gerhard Pape, Ermelo, Netherlands writes:

The article about Warré’s People’s hives in Nigeria (BfDJ 105, December 2012) interested me. I have built and managed Warré People’s hives for several years alongside standard Dutch and Segeberger hives. It is nice to have a colony building naturally and to see also the difference in Varroa behaviour: this is almost the same as for our local/regional square skep hives. In tropical areas I think of the Warré People’s hive as a vertical top-bar hive.

Earlier this year I visited a company in Ghana that had recently started beekeeping as a commercial business and has fundamental choices to make regarding the type of hives to use. There is of course the local top-bar hive with a great variety of top-bars widths ranging from 2-5 cm! There is also the remainder of earlier projects with the Saltpond hive but no frame hives.

I would like to bring the experiences of using the Warré People’s hive in Nigeria into consideration. My only alteration on the original design would be nine top-bars instead of eight. Also some change in the cover as I think the moist absorption unit can be left. (Sorry, but I use a plastic cover to look inside. This in turn is covered with good insulation to prevent condensed water falling in.)

BfD:

It matters not how many top-bars are used or their width if one accepts that Warré People’s hive is managed box by box rather than comb by comb, which means that the hive need not be maintained as a moveable-comb hive. Some Warré People’s hive beekeepers never manipulate individual combs therefore it is not significant if cross-combing or attachments occur. All manipulations, management and harvesting are undertaken only at the box level. We perceive this as a significant advantage of the Warré People’s hive compared to top-bar hives. Novice beekeepers sometimes struggle to achieve the precise measurements needed with the top-bars and also to maintain ‘one bar, one comb’ and subsequently the moveable comb technology can quickly be lost. In Warré’s People’s hive this need not matter as a whole box of honey can still be harvested without disturbing the brood nest.

On the downside we note that it is the norm in tropical Africa for hives to be horizontal rather than vertical. It may be that in hot climates bees find it easier to stay cool in a horizontal hive and vice versa in colder climates. We know of no research which has proved this to be the case but it could be one explanation why frame hives are not preferred by tropical African Apis mellifera.

We suggest that you investigate the usefulness of Warré’s People’s hives in Ghana and we would be interested to hear about your experiences.

Gerhard Pape:

I agree that Warré’s People’s hive is best managed on a box by box method and that the exact dimensions are less important working on this basis. Perhaps the height of the boxes could be of some importance considering the fixation of combs to the underlying boxes of top-bars. With respect to this I tend to make the boxes between 15-20 cm maximum. In shallow frames the lower frame bar is usually left free if starting with foundation strips. Simeoni in Kenya* mentions that splitting a swarm cluster by means of frames with foundation does affect the acceptance of a new hive.

The question of whether African bees prefer building horizontally instead of vertically is indeed interesting. My opinion is that building preference is not the issue. On one of my visits to Ghana I found a baobab tree with 12 colonies and the bees had built their combs in a variety of ways. (see picture below.). Bees are often found in hollow walls, which are also vertical. One of the reasons for good hive occupation could be that a vertical Warré’s People’s hive with good cover does not catch as much sun as a horizontal top-bar hive.

There is much for us to discover in beekeeping and we will: it just takes time and a clear mind.

*ernest simeoni @africanbees

Honey bees build comb in many different ways (Ghana)

Photo © Gerhard Pape