Hi, welcome to the forum. Unless your area is very cold (freezing) then I don’t think you need to reduce the entrance but you might like to think about making sure your corflute board is in the bottom of the hive and a winter mat placed over the top of the brood chamber to help keep the warmth in. Check with your local club on advice for how much honey to leave for your bees.
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Thanks for the heads up, I shall definitely do that.
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I;m Linda from SW FL. Brand new to beekeeping. I have started taking a class which has helped. Should get my bees this week. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Hi my name is Brooke. I live on Norfolk Island. My wife and I and our three children are proud owners of 2 Flow Hives. We also grow ginger and basil, and vegies for ourselves. We have 13 different kinds of fruiting trees on our property.
We bought our flow hives and installed them in September 2016. We bought 16 frames (2 colonies) of established bees from a local beekeeper - $600 for the bees and the beekeeper came and installed the bees in the bottom boxes for us. Both colonies have young queens.
We kept the bees closed in for three weeks, then in November 2016 we put on a queen excluder and put the supers into the top boxes.
One hive was strongly active upstairs after 4 more weeks, but the second hive not active upstairs until January. Now it is April and we are harvesting around 12kg of honey every 3 weeks. We only take from 3 supers at a time, leaving the other three supers for next harvest. Seems to be working well. Busy bees - love the flow hives. love the beautiful bees.
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Its indeed a pleasure to join tis group.
Although I am currently residing in Gold Coast Australia, I am directly involved in rejuvenation program of Cocoa Production in Bougainville. For those of you who don’t know where Bougainville is…It was formerly known as Northern Solomons. Being located North of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.
As a kid growing up in Adelaide, South Australia, my parents always have several be hives at home. My mother was still right into it before passing away at age 84.
Bee keeping is not new to me and I look forward to getting into it .
The Cocoa project I am working on has given me the opportunity to get myself into bee keeping.
I join this forum, to seek advise and assistance from anyone who is interested in working on this with me in Bougainville.
The main objective in establishing bee hives there, is to increase the pollination of the cocoa flowers. There is also some evidence that having bees, pollinating the cocoa flowers, can directly influence the aroma and flavour of the cocoa.
I am hoping that before years end, we can establish approximately 20 Flow Hives…and if successful, that number could triple as we intend to have in excess of 500 Ha of Cocoa plantations.
I look forward to hear from anyone who is interested in assisting.
Alex
Hello, Tiffany. I plan to start 2 hives at the end of this month in Nelson County, south of Charlottesville. How did your first two seasons go? Where in Virginia are you located?
Harris
Hi All.
I live in the Blue Mountains NW of Sydney. I started bee keeping October17 with my first Flow Hive, a class with Doug Purdie and the arrival of my nuc mid November.
I have learned a great deal from books, YouTube, forums and my local club. Most of all I have learned from my bees. I am obsessed and thankfully my wife is ok with the affair. In spite of the some negative opinions some of the old school have for Flow, I find the whole experience of beekeeping deeply fulfilling. I probably would not started beekeeping without the Flow movement.
I harvested my first 6kg two weeks ago. It was magical. I now have my second Flow Hive ready for Spring splits, but suspect I’ll prepare a few more over winter.
My thanks to Cedar and Stuart for a brilliant product and community. My thanks to the multitude of seasoned and newbie YouTube beek producers, Vino Farm and Frederick Dunn in particular. My thanks to the members of this forum, the answers to my questions are usually here somewhere.
Mike
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Hi Mike - good on you and well done. There are a stack of us out here who needed the impetus of the Flow Hive to get us into beekeeping and to be enriched by it …so I’m with you there for sure. All the best.
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Good afternoon all,
Just set up my flow hive and am waiting for my nuc. Kinda got myself into a big project for my backyard. Plan is to have a wildflower meadow in the open area shown in the pictures.
I am a total newb to bee keeping but have been researching like a champ for the past month or so. I am super excited to get my bees and start on this journey. I am sure I will be asking lots of question as I experience bee keeping and hope to chat with a lot of you soon. Cheers
Kingsville, Ontario, Canada
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Welcome, Deryck. We have quite a few Canadian beekeepers on the forum, and lots of people in the Northern US who have a similar climate to yours. You garden project sounds fascinating, I hope you will update the photos as it progresses! 
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I sure will. Thanks for the welcome!
Hi Pete,
My family and I plan to move back to Thailand in the future, and I would love to hear more about your experience using the Flow Hive (from Australia) in Thailand. We got a farm ca. 50 km south of Udon Thani in “mountain” area. Looking forward to hear from you. Regards Stig
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Hello. I too am new to the Forum, though I am a second year Flow Hive owner. I was not able to USE the flow hive box last season, it took a while for the bees to build their brood box out and their winter food storage. THIS year however, I hope to have my first honey production. I live in DENVER, CO, USA and look forward to learning a lot on this forum. Thanks.
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Welcome and good luck with your Flow Super this year. I set up my Flow hive last year too, and we did not get a harvest due to the long term drought. This year has been a different story, and we hope to extract honey from the frames very soon. 
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Hello from central Indiana. I just got my bees last Friday and did my first check today. What an amazing experience thus far. I even managed to find the queen today. Have been reading a lot on here and everywhere since I got my flow for a Christmas gift 
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Hi Grace… Greetings!!! how is your Bee farming activity?? Is there any bee keeper association or forum in Nigeria??
Good day All,
Please I’m new to this forum. Am a beekeeper in Nigeria. I came across this forum while searching for new methods of keeping bees and harvesting honey. I must commend you for your innovations. It’s really awesome and it makes the entire breeding process so easy. Well done.
Hello l am Helga from Austria . I am a Flowhive New Bee and will be needing help .My husband and l have just started.Excited about meeting everyone in the community.
Welcome to the forum Helga. Where in Austria are you? Do you know more flow hivers in Austria?
Hello everyone, I just discovered your forum and find it very interesting, my name is thierry ,i’m 32 years old computer engineer, I am webmaster at the company Feetunique .
So I’m here to share my experience with books and read yours.
You should quickly find me in the various sections of this Forum 
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