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Abbé Warré's book
Beekeeping for All:

1. Printed edition

2. free e-book (PDF)

The People's Hive of Abbé Emile Warré is presented as a tiered or storified, vertical top-bar hive. However there are some beekeepers who use it as a frame hive, whilst retaining several features of Warré's method. This page examines the frames issue and offers construction data on the frame versions. 

Abbé Emile Warré's comments as follows regarding frames:¹

• Frame honey is more costly to produce than fixed comb honey. (p. 25)
• The lower economic benefit of frame honey caused many sideliners to give up beekeeping. (p. 25)
• It is claimed that frames are essential for monitoring disease, but Warré argues that their introduction is one of the main causes of disease, as inspections cool the hive and stress the bees. (p. 27)
• The rise in foulbrood coincided with the introduction of frame hives. (p. 71)
• Berlepsch said that the foulbrood epidemic in Germany dates from the frame hive. (p. 107)
• Frames are not necessary for extraction, as fixed combs can be extracted in a suitable cage. (p. 27)
• 'Mobile' frames soon become immobile, requiring maintenance to remove propolis; fixed combs do not need this extra work (p. 28)
• Frames have to be accurately made to maintain bee space, thus increasing cost, whereas top-bars can be made relatively roughly. (p. 28)
• Frames considerably increase hive volume which makes extra space that the bees have to heat up and keep warm. (p. 28)
• Consumption of winter stores is higher in frame hives. (p. 50)
• Brood frames generally contain old cocoons which reduce cell size whereas the fixed comb hive has a faster comb replacement rate.
• Frame beekeeper produce less wax that fixed comb beekeepers. (p. 135)
• Manipulating frames risks crushing the queen. (p. 142)
• Managing frame hives is more difficult. (p. 145)
• Comb is more moveable in 'fixed comb' hives because only wax has to be cut through, not propolis as in the frame hive. (p. 146)

Pfarrer Johann Thür was a contemorary of Warré, although the two were probably unknown to each other. Thür,² in his book promoting the vertical, top-bar hive of Pfarrer Johann Ludwig Christ (1739-1813),³ made the following comments regarding top-bars versus frames:

• Natural comb hives use a far lower weight of honey in winter than frame hives because the latter dissipate more heat. (p. 1)
• Frames suppress natural comb construction and at the same time the retention of nest scent and heat (Nestduftwärmebindung). (p. 1)
• Natural combs form spaces between them which are closed at the top and edges so heat cannot easily escape. (p. 1)
• Frames reduce yields. (p. 2)
• Epidemics have spread amongst bees because of the use of frame hives. (p. 2)
• Frames involve more know-how, more equipment, more interventions and more work. (p. 5)

Thür repeatedly stressed the importance to bee health of retaining the nest scent and heat.

Although Warré favoured hives with natural comb built below top-bars only, in early editions of his book L' Apiculture Pour Tous (Beekeeping For All), out of respect for the freedom of his readers, he offered a frame version of his hive.⁴ One might then ask: why not just use one of the popular frame hives in common use, such as the Langstroth? The main reasons are that: 1) the small footprint of the Warré hive of 300 x 300 mm not only makes it about the size of a natural cluster but also puts all the winter stores above that cluster where it should be, rather than partly at the difficult-to-reach periphery of a larger footprint box; and that 2) the hive boxes are sufficiently manageable to operate the frame version in the same way as the top-bar version, i.e. by adding new boxes underneath (nadiring) in spring and harvesting the honey from the box(es) at the top in the autumn.

Gilles Denis and Marc Gatineau have developed frame versions of the Warré hive for certain purposes. Attractive features of these versions are the slimness of the frames used and the retention of the internal size of the Warré box, thus allowing interchange with boxes using top-bars only. The measurements A, B, C and D in the table below correspond to the dimensions on the following diagram:

Table of comparison of frames (measurements in mm)

* Warré bottom bars have a 5 mm bevelled projection beyond the side bars. Thus the total length of the wood is 330 mm.

All three hives appear to be top bee-space although the Denis has a 5 mm space at the top and 1 mm at the bottom.

References

1) Warré, Emile. Beekeeping For All. Translated by David Heaf and Pat Cheney from the 12th edition of L' Apiculture Pour Tous , 1948. (The 12th edition was published after he had moved to Saint-Symphorien on the outskirts of Tours, France.) Download PDF: http://www.mygarden.me.uk/beekeeping_for_all.pdf

2) Thür, Johann. Beekeeping: natural, simple and successful. Translated by David Heaf from Bienenzucht. Naturgerecht einfach und erfolgsicher by Johann Thür, Imker (Wien, Gerasdorf, Kapellerfeld, 2nd ed., 1946). Download PDF: http://www.mygarden.me.uk/thur.pdf . The German original is at http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/bien/bienenzucht_full.pdf .

3) Christ, Johann Ludwig, Anweisung zur nützlichen and angenehmen Bienenzucht für alle Gegenden, 1779

4) Warré, Emile. L' Apiculture Pour Tous. 5th edition, March 1923. This was published when Warré was curé of Martainneville in the Somme, France. For JPEG images of all the pages see http://ruche.populaire.free.fr/apiculture_pour_tous_5eme_edition/.
A translation of the section on the construction of the frame version is downloadable at: http://warre.biobees.com/warre_5ed_60-71.pdf
A PDF of a scan/OCR of the 5th edition in French is downloadable at:
http://warre.biobees.com/warre_5th_edition.pdf

5) Denis, Gilles Mode d'emploi de la ruche Warré (How to use the Warré hive), 2 Rue Jean Monnet, 42650 St Jean Bonnefonds, France (tel. 33 (0)4 53 86 23). http://www.ruche-warre.com.

6) Gatineau, Marc L'apiculture, telle que je l'aime et la pratique (The beekeeping I love and practise)  http://www.apiculturegatineau.fr/