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Hey everybody, welcome back to The Bee Vlog
I'm in beautiful SE Portland today visiting my friends over at Bee Thinking
I wanted to take you on a tour of their shop and show you what they've got
So at Bee Thinking they feature 3 different types of hives with a unique spin
They use redwood cedar instead of the usual pine
So you'll see on their Langstroth boxes that they are all cedar made
They also feature these interesting Warre hives
This is something you don't normally see on my channel
but it's something I'll show you today and show you that's built
Also the top bar hives
In their store they also feature a good selection of honey...
candles...
wax...
and soaps and other things made from the hive
They have a huge selection of locally crafted meads
And every Saturday they do mead tasting here
So this is their top bar hive
This is the lid. We're actually standing on the back side of the hive right now
So the bees would be moving in and out of the entrance up in the front here
But it's really easy to use top bars, that's one of the nice benefits
There's not a lot of heavy lifting, you'll see on my videos when I'm lifting these Langstroth boxes
I'm doing a lot of heavy lifting of these boxes
and when a box, a medium sized box in a Langstroth, gets full of honey it can weigh about 60 pounds
But on a top bar there's really no heavy lifting
Just take the lid up and then you have a lot of bars here that the comb is built on by the bees
This is what the comb would look like
when it's inside the hive
There's a comb guide on the underside that helps them to draw out straight comb
They just build comb that looks like that
The reason the comb is shaped in this "V" shape is because the box itself has that "V" shape to the cavity
So these bars basically make up what would be the inside ceiling for the bees
Each one fits tight together, side-by-side
And the cavity inside is where the bees live and build the comb
So you might put one follower board at one end
and then put 8-10 bars for the bees to build comb
Put another follower board to limit their cavity space, so they're in a smaller area
As they grow just move the follower board out and put in new bars
And they continue to build out on these
When you're inspecting in a top bar hive you actually start at one end
I see a lot of new beekeepers starting out and they grab a bar from the middle and pul it out
And 90% of the time they'll break that comb off
So the trick is to move the follower board out of the way
Then you can take a peek in there and see if that comb is attached to the walls and you can cut it free
and you can move that bar over and you work from one end to the other lifting the comb out
For example, this comb might be sitting in like this
So when you pull it out it will be covered with bees and you can take a look at it
It's a very simple hive design
and it's favored by those who want to keep things easy, keep things light, and maintenance-free
Another cool thing about these top bars is they have little windows in the back as an option
and you can come in here and see the bees and the comb without having to open anything up
So you don't disturb the bees at all but you can see how things are going
and if they need more space
This is a Warre hive, it's almost like a Langstroth but it's got a different size
It's smaller in dimension, and we'll take a look inside
We've got the outer roof here
and under the roof is a quilt box
I copied this concept on my Langstroth hives over the winter where I put a box on top that has a
canvas bottom with wood chips or filler inside to absorb moisture
This also has another canvas cover inside that is nice for when you're doing an inspection you can just peal
this back, you don't have to open the whole thing up, and keep the bees dark on one side
Unlike a Langstroth box however, this doesn't use frames for the comb, it's more similar to a top bar
wherein you have just a bar with a wedge comb guide that the bees build the comb on
And these have to be spaced appropriately so that you have the correct distance between the combs
and maintain good bee-space
They can be pinned in place if you want so they don't move, you can put little nails in there
you'll see that the bars have a little groove on it that you can fit in the nail
One other thing that you have to be careful of when doing an inspection on these types of hives
is when you remove the comb they can attach it to the side-walls
so you have to make sure it's cut free before you pull it out
This style also a viewing window that you can open up and see what's going on inside just like the top bar
Unlike a Langstroth box, when you want to add a box to a hive of this style you don't put it on top
you actually add it to the bottom
It's called Nadir, or "Nadiring"
So what you would do is you would remove all the boxes from the bottom
put your new box on the bottom
making sure you've got the top bars in place and the correct spacing
Then put all the bottom...what used to be the bottom boxes, now on top
in the same order that they were in before, then you can replace the canvas...
the quilt...
and the roof
And that's called a Warre hive
So later this spring when the bees are flying and the weather is nice I want to take you inside a working
Warre hive and a top bar hive and show you how the bees actually build comb and how they use the space
So that's Bee Thinking here in SE Portland
You can check them out online at BeeThinking.com
They ship these hives all over the world, so feel free to shop and buy
Thanks for watching, see you later