That’s right. Perhaps I have particularly fussy bees?
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Hi Katherine, I’ve done many cut outs. One thing that all bees do when they’re on a honey flow is store it in the available space, they fill up every nook & cranny barring the space they need to circulate air as well as their own bee space.
If the bees aren’t interested in the plastic today. They will be when the honey starts flowing in.
I have the same problem as you, waiting near 4 weeks. And I think Jeff is right about waiting for the next honey flow. My brood box is full about 95% but the blossom is patchy and scarce. This time of year is normally the big honey flow with Marri blossom but it just not happening.
The bees are so chocked into every space in the super amongst the flow frames except in the cells. So they know where to go and I catch a few every now and then going right into the cells but not depositing anything. Mob of tyre kickers.
I am not worried as the hive has plenty of stores and our mild winters allow for pretty well all year round collecting and we have a reasonable amount of trees and shrubs flowering all through the winter months. I suspect it will be June or July when the Jarrah specific to our area starts to flower will be the next good flow.
That’s what I thought, Jeff. But the honey flow here is excellent and my other hive is ready for its second harvest since I installed the flow hive (which hasn’t had a drop of honey installed in it). The brood box in the flow hive is full to the brim. The bees have built three layers of comb at the bottom of each brood frame and have filled every nook of the brood box with honey. There’s nowhere else for them to go but they still weren’t touching the flow frames…
Wow, that’s amazing Kath, maybe you’ll need to do what you said, entice them with wood/wax foundation frames. I had similar issues trying to get them to build on plastic frames, especially in the brood. It seemed they did everything they could to avoid it:) After 3 months they reluctantly worked on it. The plastic frames really need a decent layer of wax on them first.
I’m a lover of wood frames with wax foundation.
Good luck with it, bye for now.
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ROFL 
Nice one… Dang girls… 
Hi @busso & @katherinelw, I mentioned on another thread about a bloke who has harvested 50 kilos from 2 hives from 4 flow frames each hive. I’m guessing he has 4 flow frames in the middle of 10 frame supers with 2 traditional frames on each side of the flow frames. Maybe it was the traditional frames that lured the bees into the supers.
He hasn’t touched the traditional frames so far, he has left them in the hives, full of honey. He must be expanding his operation because he bought 20 sheets of foundation from me.
I’m pretty sure, once the bees get started on the flow frames, there’ll be no stopping them.
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Well I could not resist any longer. I had to see what was happening inside with seemingly so much activity looking through the windows.
Here is what I found
First frame from left
Looking in where it came from
Looking inwith two frames removed
2nd Frame from left
All of the frames I looked at had the cells open but they all seemed to be just poking about.
As I said before probably looking where to stash the gold when it becomes available
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Wow! That’s fabulous. I hope to see mine similarly covered with bees soon. And hopefully you’ll soon have plenty of honey in there, too.
@busso Bees festoon like that to build wax normally they would hang down from each other to form a chain gang type bridge - there is nowhere to hang so they are on the frames probably passing up wax to the builders
So they are doing something. Thanks for that.
Just an update on the bloke who harvested 50 kilos from 2 hives with 4 flow frames in each hive. He phoned me yesterday. Apparently he had a spill from one of his flow frames onto the brood. He thought the bees would clean it up. He thinks now the spill was worse than he originally thought. Yesterday he discovered a lot of dead bee & beetle larvae all over the floor of the hive with most of his brood slymed out.
Jeff that’s awful. Here the hive would get robbed. We don’t have beetle yet. Just shows what even a small spill can do. Are you going to help get him on his feet again?
Hi Dee, no he hasn’t asked me for that kind of help, he just wanted to know if he could use the frames straight away that had been slymed out. I was in between robbing my own bees. He still has one hive that is ok, I suggested he take some brood out of that one to help the other one & hopefully his bees don’t abscond.
I picked up the bees from the cable drum 2 days ago!!!.. Would you believe the blokes moved it at least 20 meters from where I left it in one go. We couldn’t find it anywhere. I had it sitting on 2 boxes. The bloke told us they had to move it because a lizard was eating the bees, lololol Must be the same one that was in our video.
Ps, the bees are fine, I gave them another frame of sealed brood, it looked like they could handle it.
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So what do you have to do if the beetle get the upper hand in a hive, Jeff?
We don’t have them here but any information would be great…forewarned is fore armed…so they say.
If I opened a hive and there were beetle everywhere and larvae eating their way through the frames…what does it look like? And what could I do the save the colony?
The rotten thing is though initially we will be forced to destroy all our colonies in the apiary and have the surrounding ground treated. We won’t get the opportunity to treat the bees. Have a look at the wholesale destruction in Italy which in the end will accomplish nothing. Beekeepers are losing their livelihoods and the disease will go underground. The beetle will spread and all those bees dead for nowt.
I have hosted a thread on the Beekeepers Forum in the UK. In the Flow section. We got talking about disease control…specific and general…it was going great until some guy spoilt it by being unpleasant. The knee jerk reaction is always kill/destroy. Until there is more knowledge and lessons are learnt about how to manage a new threat.
I need to make a comment on this. I just got my Flow frames last week, and I played with them, as you do… 
Well, one thing I noticed is that it is very easy to leave some cells in the open position, even after you think you have closed them. If you just put the key in the middle of the upper slot and turn it, about 2/3 of the cells at the outer edges remain open, as shown by visible “church pews” at the bottom of the frame. You can still seat the key closure plug - I have done it.
So I recommend that when you close the frame cells before first use, or after harvesting, put the key in the left, middle and right of the upper slot before replacing the cap. I think you will see less leakage.
Dawn
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“So what do you have to do if the beetle get the upper hand in a hive” - I’ve had this happen in my first hive. A large scale / commercial beekeeper will destroy the hive and any bees that are left in it.
Because it was my first hive, and I am a hobbyist who loves bees, I couldn’t do that. So I found other methods:
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I took all the frames out of the super and scooped up the huge pile of slime covered maggots and beetles and put them in a bucket (which I filled with boiling water to kill them all).
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I scrubbed the base with boiling water and detergent.
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I did the same thing with the inside of the box and then dried it all with paper towels
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I went through every frame and pulled out any beetles or larvae I could see with tweezers and squashed them.
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I put the frames back in the hive and closed it up.
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I sprinkled bird seed around the base of the hive as we have bush turkeys in our area.
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the bush turkeys started scratching around the hive and (hopefully) eating the larvae as they went into the soil to pupate.
I repeated steps 1 to 6 every 3 days until I couldn’t see any more beetle. Then I checked once a week and then once a fortnight.
My hive made a full recovery and is a thriving, happy colony.
I know these methods won’t be for everybody - but if you have only one or two hives and you have them in your garden, you can beat Small Hive Beetle without chemicals.
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Wow…that’s fantastic. Well done. I dread having the deal with the beetles but that because I have not experienced them yet.
As we don’t go into the hives from October until April…it is going to be a challenge to keep the beetles under control I am beginning to think we might have to change our beekeeping somewhat. I wonder whether the beetles will survive our winters…do they hibernate?