Warré Beehives
We hand make beautiful and durable Warré beehives to the highest standard from locally sourced and milled, naturally durable timbers. Common woods are Himalayan Cedar – Cedrus deodara, Lawson Cypress – Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, Japanese Cedar – Cryptomeria japonica, and Coastal Redwood – Sequoia sempervirens, as well as other native and exotic timbers as available. Logs are salvaged from local urban and rural tree removals and milled with a portable bandsaw mill by sawyer John Furniss. His bandsaw mill has the capacity to cut logs up to 6 metres in length and up to 900 mm in diameter. We also source some timber from another skilled sawyer, Heinz Vullings. The milled timber is stacked to dry, machined to the correct dimensions and then made into Warré beehives.
We offer Warré beehives for sale without bees year round, which you can populate with a prime swarm. A limited number of hives with bees are also available each Autumn. Our hives are populated with a swarm from the season and raised on their own virgin comb without any artificial supplements to both BioGro’s Organic Beekeeping Standard and Demeter’s International Biodynamic Beekeeping Standard. All colonies are inspected for and free of AFB at time of sale.
The standard beehive package consists of:
- Floor
- Four boxes with handle cleats and 8 waxed semi-frames per box
- Hessian cover cloth
- Quilt with sawdust filling
- Wooden gabled roof
- Mouse guard
- Emlock hive strap
We don’t paint or oil our beehives; the naturally durable timbers we choose resist weathering and ‘breathe’. You can oil your beehive with a coat of tung or linseed oil if you wish.
When you buy a Warré beehive from us you are supporting a small community of arborists, sawmillers and beekeepers to do what they love.
Natural Beekeeping New Zealand 