Warré plans
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Abbé Warré's book
Beekeeping for All:
In Beekeeping for All Abbé Emile Warré, in discussing how The People's Hive evolved, wrote:
"Abbé Voirnot gave his hive a square shape, because this shape was closer to the shape of a cylinder, a shape in which the distribution of heat occurs more evenly, but whose construction is too expensive." (p. 32)
"And the square is the shape that best approaches that of a cylinder, an ideal shape because it favours the distribution of the heat in the inside of the hive. But the cylinder is a shape that is hardly practicable." (p. 40)
It would have been difficult to name the end result of his researches The People's Hive if it was so difficult and expensive to construct and yet remain divisible, so the square form was his next best choice. However, with the advent of relatively cheap power tools and following experiments with other materials such as plaster and straw it has been possible to develop divisible hives that are cylinders or polygons other than the square.
We can list points to consider regarding hives that are round or close to round:
1) lower surface-to-volume ratio therefore more thermally efficient in terms of heat loss;
2) Warré's point: more even distribution of heat, therefore no cold corners for condensation, mould and pests;
3) better fits the natural rounded shape of the bee cluster, especially at the critical time in winter;
4) roundness is characteristic of living forms, whereas the square or rectangle is typical of the dead, mineral realm exemplified by crystals;
5) the swarm cluster at rest and in flight, the queen cell, the worker/drone cells before the elastic properties of the wax deform them into hexagons, the domed cell cappings, the rounded catenary forms of natural comb unrestricted by frames or a hive wall, the egg-laying pattern and the domes of pollen and honey around the brood area all express roundness;
6) roundness was intuited millennia ago as the shape most appropriate for honey bee nests;
7) in many landscapes the commonest choice of nest site for wild colonies is the cylindrical cavity in a hollow tree.
One of the best developed Warré web sites in French is that of Jean-François Dardenne at http://ruche-warre.levillage.org. Here we offer an Adobe Acrobat PDF containing an English translation of his page and sub-pages on approaches to make round and polygonal, e.g. hexadecagonal, hives based on Warré's principles: download PDF about round and polygonal hives.
Rodolphe Leroy developed a round hive that could be supered with a square super fitted with frames. La ruche mixte (combination hive) is presented here as an example of another way of achieving a round brood chamber that is also rigid enough to bear a load: download PDF about Leroy's combination hive.
See also the hexagonal hive of Csuja László (Hungary) which is inspired by John Gedde's hexagonal hive. A transcript of the section in John Gedde's (1675) book dealing with hive construction is available as a PDF.
Calculator for wood inner and outer widths
http://warre.biobees.com/calc/
Tom Brennan's (California) hexagonal Warré-type hive
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Dietrich Vageler's (Brazil) octagonal with vertical top-bars
Raimund's (Germany) octagonal Warré
Raimund's (Germany) icosagonal Warré
