Hi All,
We’ve recently built our full flow hive and are completely new to beekeeping. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, particularly from any locals. Our five kids are excited to now have ‘thousands of pets’ and their very own Queen Bee-yonce.
Good luck with your beekeeping adventure. I am also new to beekeeping and find this forum very helpful. We have 3 children who have been fascinated by the bees and willing participants in hive inspections etc. I intend to put photos and videos up of my progress. Cheers Paul
Thanks Paul 
We’re finding it all a bit overwhelming but are excited about the experience and learning together with the kids!
welcome, I am new here also but it seems friendly enuff,
lots to learn and very interesting and important topic to learn also.
See if you can find a local beekeeping group and get some lessons. The contact with experienced beekeepers is invaluable. Don’t put your flow super on your bees till they have 5/6 frames packed with brood. Don’t believe everything you see on YouTube. Have a look at Michael Bush’s website
Thanks Dee! We’ve been to a couple of meetings with our local group - unfortunately none of them have a flow hive but they’ve been very informative.
Don’t worry about that. The flow frames are a method of extracting the honey. What you learn from your local group is how to look after the bees. Anything else…flow-wise you will probably find here.
Enjoy your bees.
Hi,
Where about on the bayside are you (I live in Hemmant)? I go to the following bee club and a few people there have flow hives.
Bayside Amateur Beekeepers Society
The club meets at 7.30pm every third Thursday of the month at Redland IndigiScapes
17 Runnymede Road CAPALABA 4157.
They also have a field day on the 2nd Sunday of the month in Cleveland. They have members of using different hive styles and they even asked me to bring my hive in back in February to show the club. The field days are excellent and that is where you will do most of your learning.
More details can be found here
Remember to register your hive with DAFT. When you register you should be given some pamphlets with details on local clubs (basically the same list as linked above), basic bee keeping guides, and information on SHB treatments.
Hi!
Thanks for that, we’ve been to a meeting with Bayside Beekeepers and I’ve been in regular contact with Marion. Unfortunately we weren’t able to make the field day on the 13th but are hoping to get to the April one.
I’ll see you there someday.
You may have seen my husband and daughter at the meeting before last? I’m hoping to get to the next meeting and learn some more.
We are at Gumdale and have just ordered our flow hive after seeing a presentation- it was most impressive and now we are ready to learn. We already have a native hive which is thriving and looking forward to learning about the flow hive process. We plan to join the Bayside group.
G’Day Honeydale,
Sorry for the late reply, I haven’t logged on to the forum for a while. Have you been to a Bayside Beekeepers meeting yet? We’re at Thorneside and have had our Flow Hive up and running since Easter. We’ve done three harvests - the most recent last week when we got nearly 10kgs out of 3 frames - completely amazing!
Have you got your yet?
It has been a busy end of the year but we are finally ready for a nuc and planning to bring the brood box back to Gumdale -set up and ready to go sometime next week. We are keen to join the Bayside meetings. Your honey harvest is impressive!
… and a lovely nuc you have too Dr Honeydale. May your girls bring you endless hours of pleasure and loads and loads of honey.
Enjoy !
All 10 of our grandchildren have come to visit our bees today. They are fascinated to see a real live beehive!
Wondering how your flow hive is going? Our hive is very young but have settled in and filling the brood box so we added the flow Super about three weeks ago. They are busy exploring the frames but not a lot of honey happening and I’m wondering if there is a dearth on in our area. I watch the bees busy coming and going but don’t seem to be bringing much back. I’d like to see more honey to make sure they have plenty of food for winter. How did your bees go over last winter? 
Hi Honeydale!
We installed our nuc in April last year and left them to fill the brood box over the winter as they had 2 frames of honey with them. By August we put the super on and by September we were doing our first harvest. It was a fairly mild winter last year and still sufficient flow on. The bees continued to fill the frames up until November when we started to see a decrease in the production of honey. We put it down to being a particularly hot summer and a limited bloom around us.
Sadly though SHB increased over January and our inspections became weekly as we tried to break their cycle. This together with a decrease in bee numbers alerted us to our greatest fear that a local beek confirmed as AFB at the end of February. We were devastated and I’m surprised as to how emotional the process of euthanising our bees was. Subsequently, we have had the flow hive treated at Steritech and are waiting for 8 frames with a new queen that another local beek is supplying us with. Despite their support and countless hours of reading and researching over the past 12 months, it really shook our limited confidence. As a result, I’m doing a beekeeping workshop over 5 weekends in Redlands starting in April.
We’re determined to keep going! If you’re on Facebook, I can give you the names of a couple of community beekeeper pages that have been very encouraging and helpful - one specifically for Flow Hive owners. Have you been to the local beekeeping meetings yet? They’ve now got a Flow Hive (although, it’s not constructed yet) down at the research facility in Cleveland. I’ll be going to the next field day which is on April 9. Send me a message if you’re keen to go.
Hopefully all is well with your hive and your bees!
bandeesbees
Oh no Bandeesbees! I heard there was an outbreak of the dreaded AFB and I’m so sorry to hear it was your hive! What a tragedy! But you mustn’t get disheartened There is not much you can do about AFB. From my understanding there is little you can do to avoid this- it’s just bad luck. Still very sad.
We have only had our bees this year and while we had some SHB it looks like it is under control and we haven’t seen any for a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed.
Thank you for the update and I have pencilled in the field day. We will be away on holidays but I will try to come back for this.
I’ll let you know closer to the date. I am on Facebook and would be very interested in the names of more experienced beeks.
I am really enjoying our bees but there is a lot to learn
Hope to see you in April at the field day.
Best wishes
Margaret
Hi Margaret,
These are the Facebook pages that we’re members of:
AFB Aware Redlands City - this is run by Lionel Scicluna who has his own business called Malieta Honey and Beekeeping Workshops by TEK. Lionel is the beek who helped us out when we had AFB. I’m doing his Level 2 workshop in April.
We’re also on the Australian Flow Hive Bee Keepers and Beekeepers of Brisbane and Surrounding Areas pages - both quite informative, particularly for new beeks like us.
Hope your bees are thriving after the rain yesterday!
Cheers,
Donna