Yesterday I dropped off my wife at work, procured some coffee from the local coffee house and proceeded home, determined to make headway on the remaining hive projects. After 5.5 hours of measuring, ripping and screwing boards, here are the results:

10 beautiful Warre roofs:

From Shop 3-22-09

It took over 70 feet of cedar, 180 screws, produced a lot of sawdust (which I bagged to use for the quilts), but finally got me over the hump in this 20 hive production project. At this point I'm left with creating some top bar roofs, windows, mounting screens, creating Warre quilts, Warre stands, and a few hundred more top bars. I think everything is on track for the hives to be placed in the first week of April.

Here are some more images of what it's like creating 10 Warre roofs at a time:

70 wood pieces, recently ripped: 

From Shop 3-22-09

 Waiting for roofs:

From Shop 3-22-09

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Two nights ago I picked up 170 linear feet of Cedar from Jeff at Treecycle Northwest (http://www.treecyclenw.com)-- now the exclusive provider of wood for Bee Thinking. Upon arriving home and stickering it it looked like this:

From Shop

After today's work it looks like this:

From Shop

Today I completed the body of the final top bar hive, in addition to 12 more Warre boxes, bringing the total to 31 boxes. This should be enough for the 10 Warre hives until the nectar flow is really going. At this point I need to focus on building roofs, floors, top bars, windows and other miscellaneous portions of the hives so that they are ready to be in place at the wineries by the first week of April. 

Today's images:

Soon to be 12 Warre boxes:

From Shop

Walla!: 

From Shop

The last top bar hive on the assembly line:

From Shop

A lot of warre boxes, most awaiting handles and bars:

From Shop

The first top bar hive in place at headquarters:

From Shop

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Last night I completed the roof to the first Bee Thinking Warre hive, and I'm quite pleased with the results. They use approximately 30 board feet versus approximately 20 for the top bar hives, but I think the reduced maintenance and increased free time gained with the Warres will be invaluable. All that remains is to complete the quilt and top bars and then I will move on to the 9 other Warres necessary for the far reaches of our apiary.

From Warre

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