Thanks for this video. I'm in the process of building my 1st Warre hive. I particularly like the base design. My design has half lap walls so the boxes slot onto each other, to prevent movement.
Tallman - placing our boxes under yours will depend on the measurements of each. Our boxes are 35cm x 35cm (O.D.). You want to make sure that any difference in box sizes would not lead to a gap in the boxes allowing the bees to escape.
I like your new design but there was an omitted item on the traditional Warre hive. The quilt box is not put directly on the first box but there is a top bar cover cloth between the two. I do like the screen idea for both the top and the bottom.
Every spring i do about 10 splits from each colony i have that way i increase bee colonies 10xfold each year. I recommend looking into queen castles for queen breeding.
Going with a back yard hives plan for now, I still hope your hive efforts to become available as plans or through a licensed manufacturer. Praying for tour continued success.
I made similar windows for watching inside of a hive. But understood a couple seasons late that it's not necessary to make such big windows and I started to make windows with size 35x150mm - it's enough for inspection. A outside hole of a window I close buy a piece of plastic foam.
Hey Pavel, we actually evolved in an opposite direction. We started off using small cutouts (4cmx4cm), then we made the windows larger to afford ourselves a better view. I realize there is concern about larger windows letting in more light, and we appreciate the concern, but we have seen no evidence that it has any detrimental effects on the bees. In fact we had a window cover removed over the winter in 2014 (courtesy of a curious grandchild) which we did not discover for 2 months. The bees came through the winter just fine and are still one of our most healthy, productive hives.
Warré accidentally discovered that frameless hives are better than framed hives (if that customer he mentions in his book didn't cancel his order at a very inconvenient time, Warré would never have stumbled on this gem). The same can be said for your under-quilt screen: if you had read Warré book properly, you would never have had a need to develop this innovation, because Warré already knew about the problem and he already had a (low-cost) solution for it, but in our day and age where mass production makes complex hive components cheap, your solution is so much more elegant. Congrats.
Thanks a lot Chris, this is remarkably practical. All of your modifications make great sense - I especially like the clever queen entrance add-on. A question about another modification: does it make sense to add ventilation to let the moisture from the quilt escape? I was thinking of drilling openings in the the mouseboard (in the "attic") or the sides of the quilt. The downside, I think, could be moisture getting INTO the quilt, rather than out. Again, thanks for your insights :)
I'd say the insetting you're doing with the frames is a bad idea, to unwedge them once they get bee's in there they'll build up wax on them and end up gluing them in place, with that being in a slot like that prying with the hive tool would be more difficult I would think, however I've not tried it myself. Anyone else that's reproduced these or purchased one when they were selling tried it?
Chris, a beautiful product, I have a desire to use Hogg half frames for comb honey production Any chance you might someday have some form of a modification. Perhaps 27 cassettes ?
Hi. Thanks for the video. It was very informative. I see your custom innovations to the Sweet Valley Warre Hive design make tons of practical sense. I am however concerned that you have too much business to handle. That is a very unique and rare business situation in which to find oneself. Was your price structure too low to be profitable, or was the demand albeit enough to keep you busy but not enough to produce profitably? I am a bit confused. I also wonder if you would mind someone reproducing your design if they were not able to find it from you? There was no price information on your website. Thanks again.
SOT - The short answer is this: I maintain a full-time day job selling Surgical Equipment. It is this job, selling medical equipment, that made Sweet Valley Hives possible. I did not anticipate the deluge of demand I received, so It all came down to time. My price was fair, and the demand for my product told me so. The price structure was profitable - enough to keep me in business - but there are only so many hours in a day. Trying to honor my commitment to my sales job, while also manufacturing these hives in a timely manner became nearly impossible. If you would like to discuss further feel free to email me at sweetvalleyhives@gmail.com
@@hopnmeema i have designed a top bar hive for commercial use and i am willing to sell my perfected design called the Cross Hive for only 10K because that's all i need to start my bee removal business. This is a win/win deal for both of us. Please email me @ Charitablemiraclefarm@gmail.com if you are interested in discussing further details. Thanks
No I don't believe you did. I also cannot find the mention of the frame for the queen cage. I can only assume that I have read it elsewhere and muddled it up myself, my apologies. Great idea though, would it not be more useful and easier to use and then remove than your queen ring?
The material being in direct contact with the top box is NOT original Warré hive design. The original Warré hive design also mentions a customised frame for inserting the queen cage. Also when harvesting the honey in a traditional Warré hive the whole top box is removed so why in the world would you be removing the slats of the frame at the hive site?
At about 2.40 mins in you claim that the bees might chew through the cloth on the quilt box. On a Warré hive they can't because there is a top cloth over the frames/top bars to prevent this.
You're correct Bill, unless the beekeeper pulls a boneheaded move (like I did in my first year) and neglects to place a barrier between the quilt box and the bees.
Bees built a nest in the passenger door of my truck. Large red bees that sting with fervor and have a special vengeance. I have no interest in buying them a condo but perhaps they will leave my truck alone then? It is hard to drive around these winding mountain roads with big red bees obscuring my vision. I can't seem to find their honey but than again 5 or 10 good stings in the head and my eyes swell shut....
Not a big fan of the queen spacer. Although nice, it's 3 days or less most times that a queen is released. Now the pitfall is burr comb because of the added space. New bee keepers are probably not going to understand and won't remove the spacer, so in essence you've created a problem when a simple solution is to remove 1 frame put the queen in between the frame and check it in a few days, remove it and put back in the 8th frame. You have to remove the queen spacer anyhow, so lifting the bee hive box as your avoiding is pretty much canceling it out the purpose of lifting the box off or up to install and remove the queen cage. Now this is all well and dandy from what you have showed, but as a beekeeper myself I know not to put an complete 3 or 4 box complete bee hive on. Just use 1 box and that's it until they build that out 80% then add a box. Your not showing that or explaining it or perhaps your talking of re-queening a hive, but in that case you'd have to take apart the bee hive, so what's the point in not lifting off boxes for the simplicity to add a queen with a cage. Seems like a grand idea, but 100% a gimmick. Truth of the matter is lifting a box for 3 seconds to place/retrieve is much better then that of installing and removing the spacer for the queen. Or do what I would hope 99.9% of everyone does I would hope and think and place the queen cage in between the frames. I know what you've done and it appears like a golden ticket. Wow that queen cage slides right in and out. Bam don't remove it and you got burr comb possible a mess with that amount of space. Bees wasting resources and energy in burr comb is a shame.
Zak, thank you for your comment. This is a classic example of theory versus reality. First of all you claim that "you have to remove the spacer anyway".... Really? We never have, nor do we recommend removing the spacer. In fact we now supply a plug with all our queen rings to replace the benton box once the queen is released.The only net effect of leaving the spacer is that you add 3cm of depth to your box. Secondly you theorize that because the box is now 3cm deeper this will somehow stimulate the bees to build burr comb, the reality is that we've worked with hundreds of these queen ring spacers and have never seen that. Again, theory vs reality. And starting with only one box? You are certainly free to manage your hives as you see best, but personally we recommend starting with 3. Any fewer than 3 boxes and you are tempting a swarm formation very early in the life of the colony.
With all the esteem for your effort, your novations are actually some construction mistakes. If you have read carefully the book of Warre, you would understand the importance of climate stabilization by bees. It took me a single winter to understand how I was giving up aberrant innovations.
I have read the book carefully - multiple times. Thank you for your errant assumption. I have just found that the innovations we have made are helpful for the beekeeper, and completely innocuous for the bee colony. I would further suggest that many of our colonies, having survived multiple Northeastern US winters vindicates our design rationale. If your assertions were accurate, all of our hives would have perished due to our lack of "Understanding the importance of Climate stabilization by bees".
True.. the assumption made is cloth stapled to the quilt box is not warre's design and intoduces problems wich are solved on a very expensive way. Warre did NOT staple the cloth and therefore is easy ro remove and this problem doesn't had to be solved wich didn't exist in the first place.
Frank, Thank you for the clarification. Since making this video I realized that the top box and Quilt box were/are separated in the original Warre design. I did, however. miss the queen introducer and need to revisit the Warre Book. Regarding the removable frames that is only meant for the off chance that a state inspector demands to do an inspection and pull some frames. We have to make our hives "inspectable" . I don't believe I correlated the removable frame feature with honey harvesting.
I like several of your adaptations to the Warre hive. Nice work.
Thanks for this video. I'm in the process of building my 1st Warre hive. I particularly like the base design. My design has half lap walls so the boxes slot onto each other, to prevent movement.
Tallman - placing our boxes under yours will depend on the measurements of each. Our boxes are 35cm x 35cm (O.D.). You want to make sure that any difference in box sizes would not lead to a gap in the boxes allowing the bees to escape.
I like your new design but there was an omitted item on the traditional Warre hive. The quilt box is not put directly on the first box but there is a top bar cover cloth between the two. I do like the screen idea for both the top and the bottom.
Every spring i do about 10 splits from each colony i have that way i increase bee colonies 10xfold each year. I recommend looking into queen castles for queen breeding.
Going with a back yard hives plan for now, I still hope your hive efforts to become available as plans or through a licensed manufacturer. Praying for tour continued success.
Fantastic. I'd love to give this hive a try. I don't do well here in Ohio, over-wintering bees. If its not one thing, its another. Nice work.
I made similar windows for watching inside of a hive. But understood a couple seasons late that it's not necessary to make such big windows and I started to make windows with size 35x150mm - it's enough for inspection. A outside hole of a window I close buy a piece of plastic foam.
Hey Pavel, we actually evolved in an opposite direction. We started off using small cutouts (4cmx4cm), then we made the windows larger to afford ourselves a better view. I realize there is concern about larger windows letting in more light, and we appreciate the concern, but we have seen no evidence that it has any detrimental effects on the bees. In fact we had a window cover removed over the winter in 2014 (courtesy of a curious grandchild) which we did not discover for 2 months. The bees came through the winter just fine and are still one of our most healthy, productive hives.
Hi Chris. Thanks for your fast answer. I use a small torch for inspection of a hives. Pavel
Good job, thanks for the upload.
Warré accidentally discovered that frameless hives are better than framed hives (if that customer he mentions in his book didn't cancel his order at a very inconvenient time, Warré would never have stumbled on this gem). The same can be said for your under-quilt screen: if you had read Warré book properly, you would never have had a need to develop this innovation, because Warré already knew about the problem and he already had a (low-cost) solution for it, but in our day and age where mass production makes complex hive components cheap, your solution is so much more elegant. Congrats.
Ugcheleuce - I humbly accept your critique as well as your compliment. Both are appreciated.
Thanks a lot Chris, this is remarkably practical. All of your modifications make great sense - I especially like the clever queen entrance add-on.
A question about another modification: does it make sense to add ventilation to let the moisture from the quilt escape? I was thinking of drilling openings in the the mouseboard (in the "attic") or the sides of the quilt. The downside, I think, could be moisture getting INTO the quilt, rather than out. Again, thanks for your insights :)
At 3:30 do the bees propolis and clean the galvanized mesh to control air flow seasonally?
I'd say the insetting you're doing with the frames is a bad idea, to unwedge them once they get bee's in there they'll build up wax on them and end up gluing them in place, with that being in a slot like that prying with the hive tool would be more difficult I would think, however I've not tried it myself. Anyone else that's reproduced these or purchased one when they were selling tried it?
Hmmm, seems that web address isn't going where I expected. Really nice hives though.
Chris, a beautiful product, I have a desire to use Hogg half frames for comb honey production Any chance you might someday have some form of a modification. Perhaps 27 cassettes ?
where can we get this cloth from? How do those boxes stay in place? Wouldn't they fall over in heavy wind?
Hi. Thanks for the video. It was very informative. I see your custom innovations to the Sweet Valley Warre Hive design make tons of practical sense. I am however concerned that you have too much business to handle. That is a very unique and rare business situation in which to find oneself. Was your price structure too low to be profitable, or was the demand albeit enough to keep you busy but not enough to produce profitably? I am a bit confused. I also wonder if you would mind someone reproducing your design if they were not able to find it from you? There was no price information on your website. Thanks again.
SOT - The short answer is this: I maintain a full-time day job selling Surgical Equipment. It is this job, selling medical equipment, that made Sweet Valley Hives possible. I did not anticipate the deluge of demand I received, so It all came down to time. My price was fair, and the demand for my product told me so. The price structure was profitable - enough to keep me in business - but there are only so many hours in a day. Trying to honor my commitment to my sales job, while also manufacturing these hives in a timely manner became nearly impossible. If you would like to discuss further feel free to email me at sweetvalleyhives@gmail.com
@@hopnmeema i have designed a top bar hive for commercial use and i am willing to sell my perfected design called the Cross Hive for only 10K because that's all i need to start my bee removal business. This is a win/win deal for both of us. Please email me @ Charitablemiraclefarm@gmail.com if you are interested in discussing further details. Thanks
No I don't believe you did. I also cannot find the mention of the frame for the queen cage. I can only assume that I have read it elsewhere and muddled it up myself, my apologies. Great idea though, would it not be more useful and easier to use and then remove than your queen ring?
Thats cool
when are you going to start selling hives again?
September 3rd 2017 we're going back on line
The material being in direct contact with the top box is NOT original Warré hive design. The original Warré hive design also mentions a customised frame for inserting the queen cage. Also when harvesting the honey in a traditional Warré hive the whole top box is removed so why in the world would you be removing the slats of the frame at the hive site?
Hi,
If you no longer manufacture these hives, are there plans available for purchase?
Thank you
John
Will do Thank you, Mark
Is this company still around? The web address doesn't seem to be working.
Are you going to start selling again?
Not likely, regrettably
At about 2.40 mins in you claim that the bees might chew through the cloth on the quilt box. On a Warré hive they can't because there is a top cloth over the frames/top bars to prevent this.
You're correct Bill, unless the beekeeper pulls a boneheaded move (like I did in my first year) and neglects to place a barrier between the quilt box and the bees.
Thanks for your reply, I didn't expect one
Bees built a nest in the passenger door of my truck. Large red bees that sting with fervor and have a special vengeance. I have no interest in buying them a condo but perhaps they will leave my truck alone then? It is hard to drive around these winding mountain roads with big red bees obscuring my vision. I can't seem to find their honey but than again 5 or 10 good stings in the head and my eyes swell shut....
NOT honey bees!
But other than that it looks wonderful.
Not a big fan of the queen spacer. Although nice, it's 3 days or less most times that a queen is released. Now the pitfall is burr comb because of the added space. New bee keepers are probably not going to understand and won't remove the spacer, so in essence you've created a problem when a simple solution is to remove 1 frame put the queen in between the frame and check it in a few days, remove it and put back in the 8th frame. You have to remove the queen spacer anyhow, so lifting the bee hive box as your avoiding is pretty much canceling it out the purpose of lifting the box off or up to install and remove the queen cage.
Now this is all well and dandy from what you have showed, but as a beekeeper myself I know not to put an complete 3 or 4 box complete bee hive on. Just use 1 box and that's it until they build that out 80% then add a box. Your not showing that or explaining it or perhaps your talking of re-queening a hive, but in that case you'd have to take apart the bee hive, so what's the point in not lifting off boxes for the simplicity to add a queen with a cage. Seems like a grand idea, but 100% a gimmick.
Truth of the matter is lifting a box for 3 seconds to place/retrieve is much better then that of installing and removing the spacer for the queen. Or do what I would hope 99.9% of everyone does I would hope and think and place the queen cage in between the frames.
I know what you've done and it appears like a golden ticket. Wow that queen cage slides right in and out. Bam don't remove it and you got burr comb possible a mess with that amount of space. Bees wasting resources and energy in burr comb is a shame.
Zak, thank you for your comment. This is a classic example of theory versus reality. First of all you claim that "you have to remove the spacer anyway".... Really? We never have, nor do we recommend removing the spacer. In fact we now supply a plug with all our queen rings to replace the benton box once the queen is released.The only net effect of leaving the spacer is that you add 3cm of depth to your box. Secondly you theorize that because the box is now 3cm deeper this will somehow stimulate the bees to build burr comb, the reality is that we've worked with hundreds of these queen ring spacers and have never seen that. Again, theory vs reality. And starting with only one box? You are certainly free to manage your hives as you see best, but personally we recommend starting with 3. Any fewer than 3 boxes and you are tempting a swarm formation very early in the life of the colony.
With all the esteem for your effort, your novations are actually some construction mistakes.
If you have read carefully the book of Warre, you would understand the importance of climate stabilization by bees.
It took me a single winter to understand how I was giving up aberrant innovations.
I have read the book carefully - multiple times. Thank you for your errant assumption. I have just found that the innovations we have made are helpful for the beekeeper, and completely innocuous for the bee colony. I would further suggest that many of our colonies, having survived multiple Northeastern US winters vindicates our design rationale. If your assertions were accurate, all of our hives would have perished due to our lack of "Understanding the importance of Climate stabilization by bees".
True.. the assumption made is cloth stapled to the quilt box is not warre's design and intoduces problems wich are solved on a very expensive way. Warre did NOT staple the cloth and therefore is easy ro remove and this problem doesn't had to be solved wich didn't exist in the first place.
Frank, Thank you for the clarification. Since making this video I realized that the top box and Quilt box were/are separated in the original Warre design. I did, however. miss the queen introducer and need to revisit the Warre Book. Regarding the removable frames that is only meant for the off chance that a state inspector demands to do an inspection and pull some frames. We have to make our hives "inspectable" . I don't believe I correlated the removable frame feature with honey harvesting.