Hi I’m an LA beekeeper too. I live near Eagle Rock. What part of town do you live in?
David
That looks fabu Mark!
Hey guys,
I’m in Granada Hills also. Did you know LA just passed an ordinance to allow 1 hive in the backyard 10/14/15…
Pretty cool.
Anyway thought I’d say hello from GH. Our hive was in our backyard until neighbors said something. They are temporarily in Topanga Canyon but we plan on returning them home soon now that the ordinance has passed.
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HoneyLove.org is having a presentation/discussion on the Flow Hive at our next symposium, Sunday, Nov. 22. RSVP on the HoneyLove Meetup page; sorry, this forum won’t allow me to post a link.
If you can’t find the link, please email ceebs@honeylove.org
Look forward to seeing you there, especially if you are new to beekeeping, are awaiting your shipment and need education.
When you have made a few more posts you will be able to put up links and pictures. For now;
Hi Alethe
I’m in Acampo (southwest corner by Woodbridge). Where are you? Do you have your flow hive? I’m on the December list. I ordered some bees from the shop in Sacramento.
Annette
Anyone know what is up with the SF beekeepers association?
I signed up online and paid dues, didn’t hear anything. Went to this month’s meeting and it had been cancelled with no notice. There are no working email links on the website so I emailed the guy in charge of membership via his Facebook page and got no response. It the club having issues?
Has anyone with a flow hive had it in operation for a lengthy time period? We ask because is heavy and we’re curious as to how well the honey flows out.
The only people who have any length of experience will be the inventors and their testers, as they only started shipping to the beekeeping public in the second half of this year.
By “is heavy”, you mean the hive is heavy, or the supers of honey are heavy? I ask because I actually think that western red cedar is significantly lighter than pine, so the whole hive is actually lighter than most hives. However, honey is heavy, of course, and if you have 6 full flow frames of honey, you will have about 40lb of honey adding to the weight. If you mean “is heavy” as in the expense, well yes, but this is an innovation, and we are early adopters paying the premium for that privilege!
Now to your curiosity “as to how well the honey flows out”. Cedar Anderson has made a great youtube video of him draining a frame in his honey house/workshop. It looks as if it takes about 20 mins to drain the whole 3kg harvest, but the video is edited and takes less than 10 mins to watch it.
Of course the flow speed is going to depend on the viscosity of your bees’ honey - thicker honey will naturally take longer, runny honey (like clover and acacia) should be pretty quick. I am very curious as to whether heather honey will drain at all, given its thixotropic nature - maybe “jiggling” the key to shake the cells will liquify the honey to help it flow. We will have to see! 
Anyhow, hope that helps. This time next year, you will have thousands of people with a year of experience of the Flow Hive to answer your questions.
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Hi Alethe,
Did you get your frames set up? If you ordered 7, then you will actually need a 10 frame Langstroth deep box to install them (the 8 frame box only takes 6 flow frames), and you will need to make some modifications to the box if you want to use them while they are still in the hive. A jigsaw and handyman skills would be very helpful with that. As your post was over 5 months ago, hopefully you found some help. If not, post again here, and I will dig out some more links for you.
Dawn[quote=“Alethe, post:28, topic:567”]
So I just unboxed by full flow 7 frames last week. I am a complete newb and wondered if anyone had a suggestion for a source in NorCal for everything I need to create or where to buy a 8-Frame Full Depth Langstroth hive in which to install these flow frames? Also any suggestions about where to start with a NorCal Central Valley Beek group would be fantastic. I have no idea where to go after this: http://youtu.be/RGsfnMgpKaU haha Thanks in advance 
[/quote]
One thing that has crossed my mind.
Very often I have a super on a hive that is full but not capped. I have to put another on well before this as the bees will not have the room to evaporate the nectar.
Given that you do not drain uncapped honey and you have to inspect the brood box weekly during the swarm season you might potentially be having to lift a nearly full flow super fairly frequently.
Totally agree, Dee. I have had that too.
The only problem is that bees seem to love eclipses, spheres and cylinders. So when you put the next super on, they begin to fill the center cells of the new layer, before they fill and cap the edges of the frames in the supers below. Maybe I am OCD and greedy, but I want 98-100% full cells in nice neat layers! 
However, the extra roof space really helps with the evaporation of partially-processed nectar! OK, sorry for wandering off-topic, but bees are so fascinating.
North San Gabriel…hoping to get my hive this week.
Hi Marky -
I’m in Los Gatos. Just assembled my Flow Hive to go with my vegetable garden. Where did you source your bees from? Somewhere locally?
Thanks!
Margo
There is a beekeeping supplier store in San Jose.
Hi Margo,
We got our bees from http://www.thehoneyladies.com/, the are on Union Ave, so they are close to Los Gatos. Nice folks. Glad to hear you got yours put together. We don’t get ours until February.
Was that post really meant for me? San Jose is a long drive from San Diego. Although the drive might be very pretty, we have 3 beekeeping supply stores locally. 
I am getting my bees from BeeSafe here in San Diego. The owner is a senior member of our local Beekeeper Society, and is a very nice guy. The laying queen coming with the nuc is from a VSH line of gentle bees, raised without chemicals etc. Should be fun!
Dawn
I live in Hanford and keep my hives in Huron, Ca. I just got the boxes and am awaiting my Flow frames. I have two hives already and will be adding two flow hives to the lot.
Welcome! Is that in the San Joaquin valley? If so, I bet the local farmers love you! 
Dawn
Yes, I live in Kings county and I keep my bees in southern Fresno co., here in the San Joaquin. I deal with farmers every day, big corporate family farmers, and I really think they love me because I weld, machine, and manufacture. When they need bees it’s on a large scale. I do know a local large commercial organic bee keeper though, he will help with local advise:)
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