Video: Russian Bees in a Warre

I finally got to read Kim Flottum's column in this month's Bee Culture. He suggests we all move to keeping Russian honey bees because of their resistance to mites. As a northern United States beekeeper, I would expect these bees are also more suited to my colder environment. I would eventually like to maintain some but, as of yet, these bees are not available within a reasonable distance from me. I suppose I could install a queen the hives I have.

Larry, a poster on the Warre email list, posted a short video of his Russian bees. So in honor of my pondering, here it is:

Warre in the Future?

Monta was reading the comments to my last post and decided to check out the website of one of those who commented:  "thebeespace.net". She was extremely impressed with his fine website, and became expecially interested in his Warre hive. When I visited her this morning at work, she showed me his site and asked whether we might have a Warre next year. She loves the bees and also loves any new building project that comes along as well. So, it looks like a Warre hive is in our future now.

Return to Feeding

After a week of rain and cold, I noticed, over the last two days, that the workers are ejecting young drones from Bee Glad... (interestingly, not Metpropolis, the top bar hive). I couldn't make heads or tails of the situation until I went over the postings on the Warre email list where someone mentioned the bees might be experiencing a shortage of nectar. To be on the safe side, I am placing the top hive feeder back on Bee Glad... tomorrow morning.