How to encourage bees to use the Flow Frames

Hi,
I added the super to my hive a couple of weeks ago and whilst the brood box is doing well, I counted 3 bees in the super. I added a top feeder a few days ago, but that hasn’t been touched. Now I’ve sprayed the Flow frames with sugar water to see if that encourages them.

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How much wax did it take to coat all your flow frames?

Not much @John_Yeager. You saw what I did right?

I did. I am just not sure that I have enough wax collected at this point from my hives. I may have to order some.

Gave this a try 2 days ago and it work like a charm, my girls are working all the frames so honey harvest for me in a few months . :wink:

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I have good news! My bees have finally started using the flow frames.

In my last inspection, I took each of the flow frames out and smeared them with the sticky burr comb that the bees had built in the lid. This put some lovely trickles of honey and fresh wax into the flow frames.

This seems to have worked as I inspected today and found all the frames being busily worked on with some of them full and capped.

I’m thrilled.

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Yay! So it took 5 month’s for the bees to accept the frames.

It was six months all up - but I think it would have been less if I’d used the burr comb trick earlier.

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Hi Jeff, we had plenty of flow here too, the bees decided the flow hive was not to their liking for some reason. Some others have said they solved this issue by melting some beeswax and lightly rolling each face of each frame with beeswax - others have rubbed the surface of each frame with a piece of ‘sticky’ or something to give the frame a touch of bees wax. Come spring I’ll give it another go and see what happens.

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Good to hear :slight_smile: :bee: Keep us updated :four_leaf_clover:

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http://forum.honeyflow.com/t/i-am-not-seeing-any-honey-in-my-flow-hive/7914/49?u=fixit

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@FixIt It looks good to me. Your images are similar to what mine looked like after I coated the frames with wax. One piece of advice I will give regarding the harvest of the frames would be this…My two middle frames were the ones that were almost 100% capped and full of honey. This percentage decreased as you moved out toward the outside frames. After I harvested the two middle ones I left them in the same position. The bees then focused on filling the middle ones. If I have that scenario play out again I will move those frames to the outside and let the bees fill the other frames first.

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The cells look fully dawn out. My Flow had less complete cells than that when I pulled it for fall and there was nectar already in the center. I think you’re good to go.

For those wanting a basic guide for waxing the Flow frames to encourage bees up into them, I have put one together here
http://www.canberrabees.com/encouraging-bees-to-use-flow-frames/

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Looks like another good option instead of having to paint the frames :slight_smile:

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Let’s build a time machine so we can always stay in the flow! :slight_smile:

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I think painting them sounds great in theory, but I’m interested in how many people actually follow through with it in practice.

I have photos put together for painting frames and melting the wax for painting but I find it can be pretty time consuming and messy for a small number of Flow frames.

Hoping others also have success with the above ‘surfboard/cheese grater’ method :grinning:

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Yes, I think it’s definitely a good easier option. As long as it works, then all good :slight_smile:
I wonder if you did a comparison between your cheese grater method and painting if that would affect the time it takes for bees to take to the frames.
And the number of bees moving into the super…

I’ll give this method a try soon, since my bees are still finding nectar and pollen…

I am just establishing a new flow hive and had planned to go with the painting method, but I might give this a go from an ease of application perspective - like any surfboard wax, just leave it out in the Queensland summer sun for a few hours and it will melt down anyway!

I’ll let you know how it goes - the hive isn’t ready for the super just yet, but hopefully within the next few weeks.