Creating a horizontal Warré hive
I’m a big fan of Warré hives, and I have five in total, with most in Sydney and a growing number at Lewisham Farm down the coast.
When I was first learning from Tim Malfroy, he showed what he called a “coffin hive”, but I’d prefer to call a “Horizontal Warré hive” (much less scary!).
With a little bit of spare time at the end of winter, I decided to make one of my own.

This is basically a Warré version of a Kenyan top bar hive (there’s also a “long Langstroth” that I’ve seen pictures of). It holds the equivalent of three boxes worth of frames, give or take.

It offers some of the advantages of a top-bar hive, such as easy access to the hive, with no heavy lifting. It has an entrance at both ends, which can be used to easily split a hive in summer to create two hives (the second entrance is normally kept closed).
It’s obviously also interoperable with a normal Warré hive, which makes it more versatile.

It’s important that the hive doesn’t warp, otherwise the frames won’t fit. So I constructed the hive from 30mm thick recycled hardwood (mostly Sugar Gum).
I was able to get the wood at half price from the odd-ends pile at my local lumber yard, but it still ran to $403 of materials. So not a cheap experiment, but something worthwhile nonetheless.
Now I just have to catch a swarm, and I’ll be off and running!
I’ll report on how the hive works as the season progresses, watch this space…
September 5, 2017 at 9:52 pm
So good to see your new hive. I have built seven and have three awaiting bees. One hive at Hunters Hill is to be split this week. I have two nucleus hives which are set up as swarm traps. If anyone is interested I will display and talk about my experiences at the Illawarra Bee Club Suthwerland. Check their website for details.