Warre Hives

Well my Warre Hives finally arrived, which I ordered from a company in Austria back in April. I had given up on them as I had heard nothing since placing my order, and they had not replied to several emails enquiring about the hives. So in the meantime I ordered a Cornish Topbar Hive from another source (which is also taking forever to arrive, due to the delivery company losing it!). Then suddenly I had an email from the company on Austria telling me my warre hives were ready and requesting payment! They arrived within a few days of making the payment. Both are made of untreated Spruce (Cedar is better, but twice the price), and I now have the task of coating them with a mix of beeswax and linseed oil.

One hive has observation windows, the other doesn't. Neither have a varroa mesh at the bottom but have solid floors, so I'm not sure what to do about that. I need to do a bit more research and maybe post some questions on the Natural Beekeeping forum. I'm also not sure about how many coats of linseed oil and beeswax will be needed (quite a few I should imagine), how long it will take to dry (ages!) and what proportions of beeswax to linseed oil should be used for the best results. I have used 1 smallish disc of beeswax from a craft shop, melted into 500 ml of linseed oil.

I also accidentally received a Queen bee a couple of days ago, but unfortunately I had to send her back, as without a colony of workers to look after her, she wouldn't survive. I had sent a deposit to the Glocester company to reserve me a package of bees for next Spring, and they misunderstood, and sent me a queen instead. I couldn't immediately find anyone who might want her, or obtain some bees to form a colony with her, and couldn't really hang about waiting to find some in case she didn't survive, so had to return her quickly. I hope she got back safely. I'm hoping that the Cornwall company will have a topbar nuc ready for me in a few weeks though, and that my cornish topbar hive will have arrived by then. Although I could of course put the nuc into a warre hive. The topbars may not be quite the right size though. In the meantime, I also need to clear the land and level the ground sufficiently to place the beehives.