Home Harvest Hive            

I have a few langstroth hives and a fancy Italian hive (which was not a good purchase, I’ll admit it) and wanted to branch out into a Warre hive, something I’d heard was more natural (for the bees), and loved the look of this one as it has two viewing panes. The price was very good, the reviews were good too, so I ordered it.Sadly the first one arrived in a badly damaged box with gaping holes, really bashed about, one piece of glass was cracked, some wood was split etc. (when I told Wayfair they immediately sent a replacement – THANK YOU WAYFAIR).Every single piece inside the box was clearly labeled with a part number, even down to the screws (labeled in bags A, B or C) – which corresponded perfectly with the instructions.The wooden parts even had a basic coat of white paint, which is very good as any outdoor hive needs protective paint – I did decide to paint over it with LOW/NO TOXICITY PAINT (NO VOC), just an extra precaution as in Florida we have extreme heat and rain.Assembly was very straight forward, just followed the directions.One change I made was the latch – the bigger latch is attached to a fixed piece of wood (which is correct) but the smaller latch was attached to the removable piece of wood, the one you remove to look inside through the glass.That seems incorrect – if you turn the latch, it doesn’t do anything because it’s ON the piece of wood you take out.So I removed it and attached it to the fixed piece of wood above it, so that both latches now securely “lock” the piece in place.You don’t want any light seeping through the panels if possible, you want the hive to be as dark as possible inside, so having the removable panels securely in place is important.The boxes fitted very nicely on top of eachother, but they are easy to mis-align (as it’s easy with regular hives) – so I added stainless steel corner “joins”, kind of L shape pieces, so that the boxes line up easily.Everything else was superb.It’s smaller than my langstroth hive, but that’s not a bad thing – too early to put bees in there but I think it’s a great little hive.

This was so easy to piece together.The pictures were clear requiring minimal literal directions and EVEN I could figure it out.My husband and I were able to put together the entire hive and an extra super in about 30 minutes.I love this little thing.It has an observation window in the back, so I can observe what’s going on in the hive without opening it.The photo on the webpage is exact.Its exactly what you see there.Oh, and guess what!It’s already waterproofed, so you dont have to paint it.

Very pleased with this purhchase. The hive looks great, was easy to assemble, and the bees are doing great in it! Only thing I could suggest would be to have some tips/suggestions or something about how to put the bees in. The only way I could find them was in Langstroth nucs and it was dificult figuring out a way to introduce them to the hive. after thinking about it I figured the simplist way to go about it was to completely break the wood around the langstroth frame, cut the pre made guide in half, then put holes in it and zip tie it to a top bar.

Well made, easy to put together, smelled like aromatic cedar. Would recommend to anyone wanting hobby bee keeping.

My hive arrived very quickly!The assembly went smooth with great instructions.Was very pleased with the inclusion of extra viewing windows. I do plan to give it another coat of paint.I feel this hive is great product at a great price.I hope to harvest plenty of honey with this hive.