Hi from Australia

Yari, when do you meet, or do you meet? I am in Cudgera Creek and would like to meet with other keepers. Caterina

Hi Caterina, we are not doing monthly meetups anymore, the best option is to post on the FB Group and say hi, and see if anyone is doing anything with their bees you could tag along to, or offer to have people come to your beehive and help out :wink:

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Okay. Thanks Yari. :blush:

Gidday all, any Flow Hive people from Temora?

Hi all, new to this forums. Feeling excited.

Hi there. I’ve just signed up for the forum, had my flow hive since Christmas, got a nuc hive in Feb, harvested my first frame yesterday and had my hive swarm today! I’m in Tarragindi in brisbane. I have had bees a few years ago, with a traditional system, and I really think the flow hive is a fantastic Australian innovation. Now I just need to sort my post swarm hive!

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According to my bee maths, if a frame is harvested and then the bees swarm within 2 weeks of that time then they must have already been planning to swarm (ie made queen cells etc) prior to the harvest. If they abscond (all leave), then obviously this may be a precipitating factor, but swarming takes planning on the bees part.

In my (very limited) experience with bees over the past 2 years they undoubtedly draw normal frames much quicker than the flow frames. Whether this reluctance to store honey into the flow leads to swarming that may not otherwise happen I do not know. I guess if they backfill the brood best with honey instead of the flow then they are likely to swarm.

I wintered 3 hives this year with one brood box and one full (normal) honey super. I removed the Queen excluder on two hives and left one on. the one that I left the QX on swarmed first thing in spring, whilst the ones I essentially made into a double brood box did not. I think is likely because they ran out of room to lay, whilst the others moved up into the super to expand. This means next year I will either run doubles over winter, or have to check much earlier in spring to stop a repeat. Also, as my bees are from different sources I guess maybe one of the hives is more swarm prone than the others…

cheers,

Julia

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