Warre Style Beehive

Summer is certainly the time that bees seem most at home in the world, flying all about the garden, buzzing throughout the warmth of the season's days, and kissing all the flowering blossoms that need the bee magic to produce.

On the Frey farm we have been experimenting with several different styles of creative bee hive designs. The hive that I've been tending and observing the most this past year is a Warre style hive that my woodworking neighbor Kevin designed and built. The hive currently drips with honeybees, coming and going from their floral pursuits (see images below). It's built in the top bar style with multiple pieces of parallel wood spanning the top of each hive-body box. Unique to this model is that the hive-body is built in the form of a hexagon, to honor the bees own sacred geometric building. Kevin also built the hive completely without the use of metal to respect the bees' keen sensitivity to vibrations in their home. This particular model is on the roof of my bedroom, to protect it from unwanted visitors, such as bears, who have been known to go out of their way to taste the farm honey! On certain days, if I sit quietly on my bed, I can hear the bees buzzing and vibrating through the walls!

I've seen the hive swarm twice this year, each time swirling in elaborate lemniscate patterns, up higher and higher until they landed on nearby redwoods: too high for me to reach safely. I hoped these brave convoys made new homes successfully in the surrounding woods. We harvested a small amount of honey recently, which was a deep rich golden/bronze color and tasted of the Spring flora. As the summer winds down, the bees will travel far and wide to seek out late blooms to help flush out their sweet stores for the rest of the year, when forage becomes less and less available. But, for now, the bees are a buzz!