The frames of Warre beehives aren’t frames at all, but top bars. Without frames to prevent it, combs are attached to the sides of the boxes. If one planned to nail the top bars to the rebate in the box, and never pull individual combs out of the hive, all of that would work nicely together.
A lot of Warre beekeepers choose to either use full or partial frames, or to leave the top bars moveable by setting them over pins. I do the latter. My beekeeping doesn’t include activities that would require me, in Minnesota, to have my hives inspected. And I don’t plan on taking individual combs out of the hives except to test for Varroa mites, or if something looks terribly off.
With the solid bottom boards on my hives, it seems sugar shakes are the best option for checking Varroa levels. That means collecting bees from a frame, into a container.
I don’t want combs to break off of top bars because of their attachments to the boxes. I also don’t want to spend on a hive tool that I may be able to make, and relatively cheaply. Following some examples on the Warre Beekeeping website, I made a hive tool that just might work.
I bought a $2 bag of barbecue skewers, bent one with a rubber mallet, and rasped down the short, top edge. It’s plenty long enough to reach the bottom of a box, and hopefully small enough to then turn and pull up to release a comb from the side of a box.
It’s not super heavy duty, but then, neither is the comb that I’ve come across. Not even very thick comb.
Barbecue season displays in stores are going up early, and just in time.
