What to do if you need to add ‘ladders’ to your Warre box, but you don’t have any comb. I don’t want to use any plastic foundation or anyone else’s comb. So I’m using melted organic wax and painting it on posts hung from the top bars. It worked last time so I feel confident it’ll work this time.
It doesn’t take much wax, or much time to melt, so stick around when you do this.
Coating the bars and posts
These are how the t-post ladders will hang down once they are in the hive…trouble is I couldn’t remember if the bees build comb with less than 3/8 inch or more than 3/8 inch.
I started gathering the items together, went out to my bee hives and observed what looked like a swarm forming. I grabbed the melting pot and spoon and started tanging. Three days ago they headed back in when I tried tanging. Maybe this time too, then I’ll add the extra box and maybe they’ll be happy.
At 10:07 am It looks like a swarm is forming on the hive I want to add the box to
At 10;11 am Yep, a swarm is in the works…quick, get the wax melting pot and bang on it with a spoon
At 10:15 am, it’s still growing so I tang faster, wondering if I’m crazy
At 10:16 am, swarm bees are flying higher and higher
At 10:20 am, it almost looks like they are calming down
At 10:28 am after about 10-12 minutes of tanging, they are headed back in
At 10:35 am, they are definitely headed back in
At 10:44 am, they’ve calmed down for today…what about tomorrow?
At 10:58 am I add the box with t-post ladders. I’ve got to get a hive jack so I can do this right next time.
At 11:05 am, bees are crawling up t-post ladders already.
Day 3, the bees are still climbing the posts and a daisy-chain is visible.
Adventures in Natural Beekeeping 
Could the bees be bearding because it’s hot, rather than swarming?
I guess that’s possible. I noticed today that they started flying excitedly again at about the same time 10:20 to 10:30 am, so I tanged them back in again. About that time, a shadow from the fruit tree was crossing over the hive. A person could say it was the shadow that caused them to calm down.
I shot some video of the whole event yesterday. I’m going to post it tonight so you can draw your own conclusions. I’ve got to say it was interesting to watch them file back into the hive.
My wife started reading Honey bee Democracy, by Thomas Seeley. She says the bees will ‘waggle dance’ on the side of the hive before swarming. I didn’t notice that in the videos I took, so it’s possible the bees were not on the verge of swarming. I’ll check again on the next sunny day. Either way, tanging did seem to settle them down. They seemed to be in a frenzy at hive level and circling excitedly above the hive. After about 10-15 minutes of banging a spoon on the pot, they calmed down. The jury is still out.
Could also be young bees doing orientation flights. Wonder why the tanging works – do they just get fed up of all the vibrations? Must be a good workout for your arms!
I lived in an old granite building many years ago and the chimney had a bee colony in it, my landlord told me they had lived there for over 10 years when I moved in so 17 years by the time I left! Whenever they threaten to swarm (I assume) he used to use the lid off a metal dustbin and bang it with a hammer; so I’m guessing it worked for them to stay there so long 🙂
Yesterday the bees were at it again…in a frenzy at about 1:05 pm. I set up the camera, tanged about 10 minutes and they all calmed down…went back into the hive. Great video, I’m going to make a you-tube video. Uh-oh…My wife thinks I ought to be helping more in the garden and less videoing bees. Shames me into a huge all day project today. The bees get into a wild frenzy again…I don’t have time to stand at the camera so I set it up and DON’T tang. I come back in about ten minutes and the bees are all calmed down. I check the video…they haven’t swarmed, just calmed down after about 8-9 minutes. I go back to work. 🙂
You seem to be having a very good time with your Warre hive. Good for you, but I tried those out and they didn’t really work for me. I now use Langstroth hives. For anyone interested in beginning beekeeping, there are two interesting articles here:
http://wp.me/p3tfDp-1h
http://wp.me/p3tfDp-D
Thomas
At the first bee class I have ever attended, in 2007, the lecturer promised to tell us how to keep bees without using any medications or antibiotics. i listened carefully and took notes. In the last 15 minutes of the six hour class, he tells us how he does it. He takes ALL the honey, KILLS all the bees, and saves the price of all the meds. “Win, win, win,” in his opinion. It was probably then that I decided I didn’t want to have a Langstroth. That was total exploitation and I’m just not into that. Langstroth hives are probably very efficient…all the parts fit well, are interchangeable, and they are easy to learn. It’s probably not fair, but I associate the troubles the bees are going through now with images of a bunch of hives stacked up on pallets, pallets stacked on semi’s, and semi’s trucking them across the nation from Florida to the California almond orchards.
I don’t eat much sugar anymore, so I’m not interested in honey production, but if 40% of our food comes from wild pollinators, and bees are the majority of wild pollinators, then if bees are in decline, we darn well better do something about it. Our goal is to provide a place for bees a place to live, grow bee-loving plants in a poison-free garden, and leave them alone as much as possible.
I’d view that lecturer as teaching people terrible and incredibly old fashioned beekeeping practices, rather than being anything to do with keeping bees in a Langstroth hive! The whole point of beekeepers moving from keeping bees in a skep to using removable frames in a Langstroth was that you didn’t have to kill the bees anymore.
I don’t use any antibiotics in my hive. I do use ‘soft’ varroa treatments (Apiguard, which uses thymol as the active ingredient and oxalic acid once a year). I do this mostly to keep my bees healthy but also partly out of respect for other beekeepers – in London there’s a high density of hives and I wouldn’t want to spread varroa to hives belonging to other beekeepers.
Growing bee-friendly plants and not using any chemicals on them is so important, wish more gardeners would be like you.