Warre hive owners....

[BjornBee]

Has anyone had a state inspector yet go through your established Warre hive?

I now am starting to see some market Warre hives as being legal in all 50 states. The "legal" part comes from the idea that the comb is removable.

I know my own Warre hive has comb attached on the sides and the bottom of the combs. I have taken a box apart using string, slicing between the boxes. But the removal of the comb, prior to actual harvesting the honey, is very damaging and destructive.

So my question is this....Have you ever taken apart the entire Warre hive after it is established, doing a full inspection of the combs? Has anyone ever had a state inspector take apart the boxes comb by comb?

I know some questioned the inspectability of TBH hives, and that was a non-issue, as the comb is easily removed for inspection. But cutting out the Warre comb would be on a whole different level.

So who has had their Warre hives inspected by an inspector? How did that go? What was the damage or outcome?

I really have an issue with promoting Warre hives under the marketing that they are legal in all states, when having to go in and cut out the comb is a real problem. It would be interesting to see how inspectors will deal with this going forward.

For the record, I know two other people besides myself, who have Warre hives, and have seen their hives. Both agree that inspecting combs is not recommended or advisable, without destruction of the comb.

Maybe someone has a good way of getting all the comb out for inspections. I would love to hear about it.

[David LaFerney]

I know that TN requires you to only use "modern" hives, but hypothetically what would it hurt to keep an apiary of more or less un-managed bees in skeps, Warres or something like that? 

It seems like it would actually be a good thing, because in order to make it they would have to be those locally adapted survivor genetics that everyone talks about, and their drones and swarms would seed the area with those genes.

Is there really a valid reason, or is this law obsolete, and misguided?

Or could such a yard be a typhoid Mary of AFB or something like that? 

Just wondering, not planning a guerrilla apiary. 

[Robo]

I've used wire to separate the boxes and then laid the box on its side and slid my Betterbee giant hive tool up from the bottom along the wall to separate the comb on both sides.  Then I gently removed the frame with very little damage.   Obviously works better with comb that has had brood raised in it.  I have never done a complete (removed all frames) inspection, that would take a lot more patience and time than I have, but I could see it being feasible if required.  It has been decades since I've dealt with an inspector, but I don't recall ever pulling all frames out of a hive anyways.

The ones I've seen for sale claiming fully legal in all states had frames, but I'm sure there are a few that are not.

[Paraplegic Racehorse]

There has been a suggestion on the anglophone Warre mailing list that those beeks in areas of mandatory inspections should maybe consider half-frames: side-bars of approx 1/2 box-height to prevent comb attachment to side walls.

Personally, I consider inspections to be ridiculous. What do they prevent? In the case of a bad outbreak of foulbrood, can you not smell it simply by removing the roof? I can think of no other reason why a hive might need destruction by fire, nor any other diseases which are so contagious as to become a threat to neighboring hives - and potential source of lawsuits from neighboring beekeepers in such a ludicrously litigious society as the 48 contiguous states.

Probably the single biggest reason for beekeepers never noticing diseases in skeps or old box-hives is the fact they are destroyed in harvest. It would be a rare occurrence for such a hive to go more than two years without being harvested. The regular issuance of swarms and consequent interruption in brood-cycle probably plays a large role in disease reduction (and varroa?), also.

[David LaFerney]

There has been a suggestion on the anglophone Warre mailing list ...

Where do you sign up for that?

[Paraplegic Racehorse]

Heh. My bad.

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/warrebeekeeping/