Checks on a stacked fixed-comb hive often begin at the entrance, the windows and the scales. These reveal progress in comb building, changes in the bee population and the development of stores. A decision about brood or the queen may also require a view of the combs. The examination follows the question that needs answering for the particular colony.12
Christ attaches great importance to the windows in his boxes. He uses them to observe comb building and, before a split, to look for brood in the intended parts. He also describes how cross-comb can obstruct the view. Even in a Warré hive fitted with windows, only part of a fully built box remains visible.13
Observing the entrance and surroundings
Stand to one side of the hive to observe flight without obstructing the approach. Watch for incoming pollen, unusual agitation, fighting bees and increased numbers of dead bees. Bearding can indicate heat or lack of space. Such signs become meaningful only when considered alongside the weather, season and colony’s development so far.42
First compare a sudden reduction in flight with neighbouring colonies. If all are flying less, external conditions carry a different significance than if only one colony falls behind. Incoming pollen suggests brood rearing, but proves neither the presence of a queen nor any particular amount of brood. Planning a split or investigating suspected queenlessness requires a view of suitable brood.45
Fighting at the entrance combined with heavy flight may warrant a closer check for robbing. Crawling or deformed bees and unusually high numbers of dead bees call for prompt examination. An external sign alone does not establish a particular disease; the sample needed depends on what is suspected.46
Estimating stores by weighing
A hive can contain extensive comb yet little food. For a useful weight estimate, weigh empty boxes with their top bars, together with the floor, roof and quilt box, once. In an occupied hive, comb, brood and bees add to this weight. What remains after subtracting the wood cannot therefore all be counted as honey.3
A hive scale shows gains and losses over longer periods. Record the dates of boxes added underneath, honey removed and feed given so that these changes can be distinguished from incoming nectar or consumption. Individual measurements are most comparable when taken with the same arrangement and at similar times of day.7
When lifting one side with a spring balance or luggage scale, the reading depends on the lifting point and support and does not directly equal the total weight. Check such an arrangement first on an identically built hive with a known load. Lift the colony only as far as the measurement requires; tall hives in particular must not be allowed to tip.38
Before a harvest, total weight alone is insufficient: establish how much food lies in the boxes that will remain. In winter and spring, it also matters whether the bees can reach the food from their cluster. A cold spell may break contact with more distant stores. A confirmed shortage calls for food in good time; waiting for better flying weather may then be too late.89
Examining debris and mite fall
A floor insert shows where bees are active above it. Wax scraps, cell cappings and pollen indicate food consumption, emerging brood and comb building. Their position can help locate the winter cluster. Debris accumulated over an unknown period is harder to interpret than material on a fresh insert with a known insertion date.10
To measure natural mite fall, use a monitoring insert that fits the hive, beneath a mesh that keeps bees off the collecting surface. A solid floor needs a suitable insert for this purpose. The surface should cover as much of the comb area as possible. Ants and other animals may remove mites and distort the result; an oiled monitoring sheet prepared according to the diagnostic instructions limits this effect.1011
The LWG describes counting after about two to three days. To calculate the mean daily fall, divide the number of mites found by the actual number of days the insert was in place. Record mite fall after treatment separately, since it needs a different interpretation from natural fall. If the insert is dirty, displaced or visited by ants, repeat the measurement under suitable conditions.11
A single low reading does not provide lasting reassurance. Repeat infestation checks through the year and after treatment; the burden may change again, particularly in late summer and autumn. Use the recommendations from the responsible beekeeping advisory service for the relevant season and measurement method. Treatment must suit the brood and nectar-flow conditions.12
Gaining access to the brood
Before opening, decide what needs to be seen: very young brood after a split, for example, the brood pattern of a colony that is falling behind, or a suspect group of cells. A light and a safe support for boxes being removed make a targeted examination easier. Preserve the order and orientation of the boxes.213
In a Warré box with straight comb, first look between the combs from below. If the box is tilted for this purpose, keep the comb faces vertical. For closer examination of an individual comb, release the box from the one below, then cut that comb’s side attachments with a suitable comb knife. Lift it by its top bar only once it is free. A comb holder supports the bar during examination, leaving the unsupported comb hanging vertically.138
This access depends on the comb actually following one top bar. Cross-comb, connections between several combs or continuous comb across box boundaries may tear when lifted. Nor can the same procedure readily be applied to Christ’s lower boxes, which lack the complete sets of top bars found in the Warré hive.1314
Where comb is difficult to access, prepare a necessary brood examination with an experienced person or the responsible bee health service. Taking a targeted piece of comb may be more appropriate than trying to free a whole comb. Establish which cells and which sample are needed before cutting.6
Investigating unusual findings
Examine patchy brood, discoloured or sunken cell cappings and dead larvae more closely. For investigating American foulbrood, the LGL specifies both suspect brood comb and samples of stores immediately around the brood nest. A sample from an arbitrary upper honey comb does not serve the same purpose.15
Agree sampling with the testing laboratory. It specifies the material and quantity required and how it should be packed. In Germany, suspected American foulbrood, among other diseases, must be reported immediately to the responsible veterinary authority. Do not wait for the laboratory result before reporting it.615
Checks also require brief records: the date, brood observed, bee population, stores, mite findings and next necessary step. Record a comb surface that could not be seen as unexamined. At the next visit, this makes it possible to distinguish a new finding from one that has improved or still needs clarification.2
Nucleus colony
A new colony formed by the beekeeper rather than by waiting for a swarm. Brood and bees from a strong colony are placed in an empty hive.
Christ makes nucleus colonies “after the Franconian manner”: a piece of brood comb four to five inches square is placed in an empty hive, and the bees rear a queen from it (K1 §5). He prefers this method to swarming and allows about a hundred boxes for an apiary of ten colonies, four of which are to swarm (K4 §26).
Combs in a straw skep are fixed in place. Harvesting the honey requires cutting them out and destroys the colony in the process. The usual practice was to set the skep over burning sulphur and suffocate the bees.
Christ calls this the “old routine of most country people, which can hardly be rooted out: in autumn they slaughter and suffocate the heaviest and the lightest hives, irresponsibly and quite sinfully” (K3 §2).
Christ also objects to the quality of honey obtained this way: it is “fouled with brood, dead bees, the smell of sulphur and the like” (K3 §6).
Christ’s word for an individual box in his stacked hive. It consists of four planed boards, measures thirteen inches square externally and four and a half inches high, and has an entrance at the front, a pane of glass at the back, a cornice at the top and a grid beneath it (K3 §4).
The boxes have neither floors nor lids. The lowest stands on a floorboard that also serves as a landing board (K3 §9); the top one receives a cover of wood, glass or plaited straw (K3 §4).
For a colony that is not to swarm, Christ allows eight boxes over the summer; for a young swarm, six (K4 §26).
Placing an empty box on top of a full one. Christ considers this easier, but nevertheless does not use it to expand the hive:
“Setting on would of course be somewhat more comfortable than setting under; but it will not do. The nature of bees is to build from the top downwards, and to go on building where they have left off.” (K4 §26, footnote)
He does add vessels above for harvesting. Glasses and porcelain vessels are inverted on the top box’s cover so that the bees can build into them from below; the comb is cut with a silk thread or thin piano wire (K3 §5).
The modern German word for any human-made bee dwelling originated in forest beekeeping. Christ writes that forest bees are “drawn into hollow trees or into Büten or Beuten hewn out expressly for the purpose” and belong to the forest owner (K9 §2).
He does not use the word for his own boxes, which he calls Aufsatz, Kästchen, Magazin or Bienenwohnung.
The gap bees leave open in their hive rather than filling it with comb. Combs hung at this distance can be removed individually without cutting. Lorenzo Langstroth described the spacing in 1851 and received a patent for a hive using it on 5 October 1852.
In this repository, the statement is supported by a search summary covering several pages rather than by the patent document itself (source key langstroth-1852).
A measurement from a source read directly appears in Warré. He leaves twelve millimetres between two top bars, expressly “pour le passage des abeilles” [for the bees to pass through] (Warré 1948, p. 49).
Dzierzon
The priest associated with beekeeping’s transition to movable comb. Writing in 1889, Johann Witzgall recounts that Dzierzon began keeping bees “mit dem Christ'schen Magazinstocke” [with Christ’s stacked-box hive] and through experimentation developed “den jetzt allgemein verbreiteten Stock mit beweglichen Waben” [the now widely used hive with movable combs] (Witzgall, Geschichte der Bienenzucht 1889, p. 56).
The changes began with Christ’s comb-supporting grid. Dzierzon fitted the boxes with movable bars and attached comb to them so that each comb could be lifted out separately. Side doors, fixed floorboards, ledges on the inner walls, shorter and taller boxes and a fixed lid followed (Witzgall, Geschichte der Bienenzucht 1889, p. 56). Christ nails down the six wooden strips of his grid (K3 §4).
In 1844, Dzierzon presented his invention publicly. The distinction between movable- and fixed-comb beekeeping dates from that year (Witzgall/Felgentreu 1889, p. 102).
Witzgall writes forty years after the event and does not quote Dzierzon himself.
The opening through which bees enter and leave. Every box in Christ’s hive has one, four inches long and 1¼ inches high, with two metal slides in front (K3 §4).
Christ explains its size in terms of the air bees need when confinement is necessary and the ease of feeding (K3 §4, footnote).
Since every box has its own entrance, adding a box underneath requires another step: two or three hours later, the upper entrance is closed completely, “otherwise they do not readily build on” (K3 §9).
Four strips of wood glued and nailed to the top of each box. They support the grid and project a quarter of an inch outwards (K3 §4).
Christ gives two purposes for the projection. It forms an ornament, shaped with an ogee plane, and ensures that “all the supers fit well on one another and stand firm if one should turn out ¼ or ½ inch larger or smaller than another” (K3 §4).
This projecting rim prevents wall thickness from being read off the engraved plate. The oblique view in Fig. 1 shows the wall and cornice together at the edge.
Émile Warré (1867–1951) was a French priest and beekeeper. His Ruche
Populaire (“People’s Hive”) was intended to be simple to build and manage.
He described its construction and management in L’Apiculture pour tous,
whose twelfth edition appeared in 1948.
Christ’s own addition to the stacked-box hive. A hole seven inches long and two and a half inches high is chiselled in the rear wall of each box, the glass is fitted into it, and a small shutter excludes the light (K3 §4).
At the end of the same section, in a passage for readers wishing to omit all other refinements, he gives his judgement: “A glass pane in the rear board, however, is almost indispensable.” (K3 §4)
He answers the obvious objection from observation. Bees attach comb to glass as firmly as to wood or straw and keep it clean; what they coat in autumn, they clean again in spring (K3 §11).
The French word for a box placed above another. Palteau’s hive consists of a table, three legs, several hausses, a cover and a landing board; each box measures one foot square and three inches high (Palteau 1777, pp. 7–11).
Christ has not read Palteau in the original. In a footnote to the preface, he writes that only years after his own invention did he read “something of similar bee dwellings”, “such as those of Herr Palteau in France and the Vicat one, which Schirach in his allgemeinen Bienenvater describes” (Vorrede).
A textbook of religious doctrine arranged in questions and answers. Every child worked through it in lessons and learnt the answers by heart; the form was therefore familiar even to readers who read little else.
In 1784, Christ applies it to bees while distinguishing his purpose from that of the classroom. Catechetical teaching is “für den gemeinen Mann die faßlichste und deutlichste” [the easiest for ordinary people to grasp and understand]; he intends no catechism “zum Auswendiglernen, sondern blos zum Unterricht und Nachschlagen” [for memorising, but only for instruction and reference] (Christ 1784, p. VI). His Bienencatechismus für das Landvolk consists of 197 numbered questions, some of which state the opinions he opposes.
Log hive
A log hive is a hollowed section of a felled trunk used to house bees. Unlike a cavity in a living tree, the whole hive can be taken to another site.
A word at the foot of a printed page that repeats the first word of the next. The compositor used it to keep the sheets in order.
It can cause errors in this project: including the catchword when transcribing an old page duplicates a word. In the Vicat source text, three catchwords appear at the head of the following page rather than the foot of the preceding one: “festiget,” (110/111), “einiche,” (118/119), “voraus,” (120/121).
Stacked-box hive, Magazin
A hive made up of several boxes stacked vertically, each removable separately. Christ calls it a Magazin or Magazinstock.
He describes bees having “their household in joined supers … that are increased or reduced from time to time as circumstances, the season and one's intentions require” (K3 §3).
Christ presents wood and glass as innovations. The usual stacked hives had been made of straw, “at least I have seen none of any other kind”; their drawbacks led him to square wooden boxes with a pane of glass (K3 §3).
Beekeeping with movable combs. Its German name arose alongside the contrasting term Stabilbau. In 1889, Witzgall and Felgentreu date both to 1844: “Seit 1844, wo Dr. Dzierzon zuerst mit seiner Erfindung öffentlich hervortrat, spricht man in Imkerkreisen von einem beweglichen oder unbeweglichen Bienenstocke, vom Mobil- oder Stabilbau.” [Since 1844, when Dr Dzierzon first presented his invention publicly, beekeepers have spoken of movable or immovable hives, of movable- or fixed-comb beekeeping.] (Witzgall/Felgentreu 1889, p. 102)
Christ predates this distinction. The bee specialist F. Gerstung later defined his contribution precisely: “in Deutschland der eigentliche Begründer der Mobilbienenzucht … freilich nicht so sehr der Beweglichkeit jeder einzelnen Wabe … als vielmehr der Mobilität, d.h. der Beweglichkeit von Teilen des Bienenstockes, von Auf- und Untersätzen” [in Germany the true founder of movable-comb beekeeping … admittedly less of the mobility of each individual comb … than of the mobility of parts of the hive, of upper and lower boxes] (quoted in Bode 1984, p. 381).
Witzgall/Felgentreu 1889, p. 102
Nadiring
The technical term for adding a box underneath: an empty box is placed below a full one. It describes the operation Christ calls Untersetzen.
The earliest vertically divided hive using this method documented in the project is Gedde’s octagonal box. It has two iron handles “for lifting it up when another is to be placed under it” (Gedde 1677, pp. 18–19).
Top bar
A top bar is a wooden strip to whose underside the bees attach a comb. The comb may also be attached to the hive walls. A top bar alone therefore does not make the comb individually movable.
Lorenzo Langstroth described bee space in 1851: a gap of about a centimetre that bees leave open rather than filling it with comb. He received a patent for it on 5 October 1852. Since then, combs have hung in frames that can be removed individually; this remains the most widespread construction in much of the world.
Christ’s stacked-box hive predates this development. In his hive, the movable unit is the box, lifted off whole while its combs remain inside. The bee specialist F. Gerstung therefore called him the founder “der Mobilität, d.h. der Beweglichkeit von Teilen des Bienenstockes, von Auf- und Untersätzen” [of mobility, that is, the mobility of parts of the hive, of upper and lower boxes] (quoted in Bode 1984, p. 381).
Christ uses the word Rähmchen once, in a different sense: the pane of glass in a straw box is “fitted into a small wooden frame” (K3 §8).
A ring skep consists of straw rings of equal diameter, stacked to form a
shared interior. More rings can be added to enlarge the hive. Fixed crossbars
support the combs and allow individual sections to be removed with their comb.
AI-generated schematic illustration after Fleischer (1777).
Fleischer 1777, pp. 311–314; explanation of the plate, Figs. 2–4
Rose, Rosentafel
Christ’s term for a comb. He uses it as a synonym for Wachstafel and combines the two when explaining how young colonies can be recognised: “by the whiteness and delicacy of their wax combs or roses” (K2 §10).
Compound forms occur throughout the book. Honigrosen are honey-filled combs (K3 §5), while Bruttafeln contain brood (K4 §2).
The comb guide in Christ’s box. Wooden strips, each one inch wide, are nailed into the rebates of the front and rear cornice strips; the bees align their comb with them (K3 §4).
The number depends on the position in the stack. Only the top box receives six strips, “so that the bees attach and build their combs in this direction, from the rear wall toward the flight hole”. The lower boxes receive two, since the bees continue in the direction already established (K3 §4).
Christ gives three reasons for using fewer strips below: the colony clusters more closely in winter, debris does not collect on the wood, and bees can move up and down more easily (K3 §4). To support heavy honey combs, each box with two strips also receives a cross made of two round willow or hazel sticks (K3 §4).
A bee that flies out before a swarm to seek a new dwelling.
Spurbiene is Christ’s own term, although he considers the behaviour unproven. The idea that bees “some days before swarming, seek out a hollow tree by means of scouts, or so-called scout bees” belongs, in his view, “in truth quite among the mere conjectures” (K4 §9). He nevertheless accepts it for hunger swarms, having watched individual bees clean an empty hive for days before a swarm moved in three days later. He does not regard scouts as a separate caste: they are “of course no special kind of bee” (K4 §9).
A hundred and eighty years later, experiments with boxes in the forest measured the criteria by which a swarm chooses a nest. These criteria underpin the story “A bee in search of a home” (Seeley and Morse 1978, cited indirectly rather than read in full).
Beekeeping in hives without movable frames. Comb is firmly attached to the ceiling and walls. To remove it, the comb is cut free or taken out with the hive section to which it is attached.
Witzgall and Felgentreu date the distinction between fixed- and movable-comb beekeeping to 1844, the year Dzierzon presented his invention publicly (Witzgall/Felgentreu 1889, p. 102). By 1889, the same authors already regard fixed comb as needing justification. They open their chapter by suggesting that some readers may be surprised to find it included, “nachdem man ja doch schon längst den Stabilbetrieb als veraltet und für die heutigen Zeiten als abgethan betrachtet…” [since fixed-comb management has long been regarded as outdated and no longer relevant to the present day…] (Witzgall/Felgentreu 1889, p. 209).
Christ does not know the term. In his time, there is nothing from which fixed-comb beekeeping needs to be distinguished.
Witzgall/Felgentreu 1889, pp. 102 and 209
Straw skep
The ordinary bee dwelling of country people in Christ’s time: a basket coiled from straw ropes, made in one piece and impossible to divide. Honey is harvested by cutting out the comb, and the colony dies in the process (K3 §2).
Christ proposes his stacked-box hives instead. An apiary of thirty to thirty-six of them is “worth more than an apiary of 100 pieces in straw baskets” (K4 §26).
He also describes continued use of the skep. In K3 §10, he explains how to place a straw skep on a lower hive box, seal the skep’s entrance and thereby draw the bees down into the boxes.
A small basket placed on top of a straw skep for the bees to fill with honey comb. Christ uses the country people’s terms: “the small baskets (caps, hoods) which the country people set on the straw baskets” (K4 §26, footnote).
Their limited use strengthens his objection to adding space above. Of ten colonies, scarcely one or two build into them, and only in a particularly good honey year; many prefer to build outside rather than in the basket above (K4 §26, footnote).
The same box as an Aufsatz, occupying a different position in the stack. Christ explains the term in a footnote:
“I shall hardly need to remark that by lower supers I understand nothing else than those supers which stand lowest, because they are mostly only ever set underneath; and they may all be called little boxes, on account of their likeness to such.” (K3 §4, footnote)
The name follows the position in the stack. The comb-supporting grid differs: six strips in the top box, two in the lower boxes (K3 §4).
Placing an empty box beneath a full one. This is Christ’s way of expanding the hive and the operation around which his entire management system is organised.
He specifies the timing: once the lowest box is “built somewhat more than half or to three parts full”, the next goes beneath it, and so on into August (K3 §9). Only one is added at a time, since “the bees build more readily into one empty super than into two” (K3 §9).
He describes the work twice. His earlier method takes place very early in the morning, with a helper lifting the hive while the other person withdraws the floorboard (K3 §9). His later, improved method is at midday, during peak flight, when “Out of industry and eagerness in bringing in they trouble themselves about nothing” (K3 §9).
The resin bees use to seal crevices and attach comb, now called propolis.
Christ explicitly distinguishes it from wax: “The cement or fore-wax, which is different from wax and is properly a sticky resin, though after being worked and especially in the cold it becomes quite hard” (K1 §14).
He uses it when populating a hive. Melted over coals and brushed into the corners of a new box, it keeps a young swarm in place; a previously used box already coated with resin provides the same advantage without the work (K4 §21).
The old German word for the queen. Christ uses both terms together: “The queen, called by the ancients the Weisel” (K1 §1).
In compounds, the older term has remained more common. Weisellosigkeit means the condition of a colony without a queen; Christ devotes a separate section to it (K5 §6).
A medieval forest beekeeper who kept bees in hollow trees and paid dues for doing so. In his chapter on law, Christ connects the occupation with rights over trees: “the Zeidler company formerly arose from this, who pay a certain rent in honey and wax to the forester or to some other lord of the forest” (K9 §2).
For him, this belongs to the past. The house and garden bees of his own time belong “among our domestic animals” (K9 §2).
The unit of length Christ uses has not been conclusively identified. There was no uniform inch; each region had its own.
Only once in the whole book does Christ write “lines Paris inch”, when giving the length of a queen. Before that, he has already used inch twenty-four times without qualification (Anmerkungen des Übertragers).
The transcriber compared the construction dimensions with Christ’s stated volume of four Maß. Using the Paris inch (2.71 cm) produces a discrepancy of 27 to 34 per cent; the Frankfurt inch (2.37 cm), one of 1 to 8 per cent. He concludes that the lengths cannot be expressed in Paris inches and that the conversion factor lies between 2.4 and 2.5 (Anmerkungen des Übertragers).
This is an inference, not a statement by Christ, who nowhere specifies which inch he means.
The old church due: approximately a tenth of a farm’s annual produce, delivered as crops, wine or livestock. Part of it paid the parish priest, who collected it from the same people to whom he preached on Sundays.
Christ collected tithes himself and went to court over them. When a tithe income ceased, he received land instead, a “Besoldungsstük zum Ersaz des Zehnden” [a plot of land forming part of his salary in compensation for the tithe] (Bode 1984, p. 181).
Bode 1984, p. 181
Bienenkiste
The Bienenkiste is a long, horizontal fixed-comb hive with the brood area at the front and the honey area at the rear. Its removable floor gives access to the combs from below.
Zeidlerei is a traditional form of forest beekeeping in which bees are kept in cavities cut into living trees. Current initiatives revive the craft both for keeping bees and for creating habitats for species that live in tree cavities.
This sample contains stored food taken from close to the brood nest. A laboratory examines it for spores of the bacterium that causes American foulbrood.
Hive debris is material that falls from the colony onto the hive floor, such as wax particles, pollen and dead mites. Its composition and distribution give clues to activity in the colony, including comb building, food consumption and the position of the winter cluster.
Flavonoids are secondary plant compounds that also occur in honey. Their measured total content describes one aspect of its chemical composition. A higher value alone does not demonstrate an additional health benefit from the honey.
David Heaf is a beekeeper and author in Wales. Together with Patricia Heaf, he translated Warré’s L’Apiculture pour tous into English. His website brings together plans, management methods and accounts of beekeeping with the Warré hive.
Phil Chandler is a beekeeper and the author of The Barefoot Beekeeper. He developed his own horizontal top-bar hive for beekeeping with few interventions in the brood nest and published freely available construction plans.
