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Books? Are you a bot or a human?? :smile:

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Welcome!! To the forum. I have enjoyed meeting all the bee keepers here and they are a great resource to us newbees for sure.

Welcome you need to spin you flow super the other way around. You donā€™t want to be draining your honey right above the entry landing board.

Funny I didnā€™t notice that when I took this picture. I have had it the correct way since the bees came

from Chicago, just harvested my summer honey, about 6 gallons. I have drunk the Kool-Aid. Bees happy, no killed bees in process, no need for my bee suitā€¦ too good to be true actually! Question: how do the bees know that beneath the cappings the honey has drained out?.. and do they eat/ dispose of the cappings? Just curious.

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Hi, twalker, the bees seem to sense, know the honey is gone from the cells, they uncap and repair the cells to be refilled, all happens fairly quickly.

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Lucky you @twalker! So wonderful to hear another success story :sunglasses::+1:

If I had to guess the answer to your very good question about how the bees know the cells are empty, Iā€™d say perhaps through subtle vibrations - like how we can tell something weā€™re walking on is hollow. I also wonder what they see when frames are being crackedā€¦

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The capping sheet does actually crack vertically, mostly behind the cappings, but mine had some vertical tearing on the frame face too. So they may see those rips as a clue that repairs are needed. I bet they can smell the honey through those gaps too, and investigate why there is a strong honey smell. :blush:

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Ordered my new Flow Hiveā€¦ canā€™t wait for it to come in and get started! This journey will be bizzzzy and fun. Any and all advice would be great! Set up doā€™s n donā€™ts, location advice, seasonal issues, etc. Thanks ahead of time! Amy S

Introducing my apprentices. My grandgirls are fascinated by all things bee related.

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Hi! My name is Sarah, and I am a new beekeeper. Iā€™ve watched the Flow Frame buzz for a few years after I saw the kickstarter. This year I made the dive into beekeeping and Iā€™ve got a hive set up at my farm in Oklahoma. So far we have not had any major issues with pests, robbing or mites- so we feel pretty lucky. I had a full bottom super, on recommendation from my mentor I added a second super. Theyā€™ve mostly moved into the top super, filled it completely full, are ignoring the bottom super, and are in the flow frames but not filling it yet. Theyā€™ve had the flow frames about a month, now. Watching the video on ā€œWhy my bees arenā€™t filling flow framesā€ and hoping to get some progress soon.

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Hi Sarah, welcome to the Flow forum. You are a bit late in the season to expect any honey in the Flow super for this year. In fact, I would be taking it off the hive at this point and treating for varroa if necessary. The bees should take to it pretty quickly next year, if you have 2 full brood boxes. Feel free to ask any other questions you have, and perhaps have a read of this thread:

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Hi everybody. I am Koos from South Africa and I am just starting out with the bees, I have a coupe of wild swarms that I want to catch and I am planning to start this coming Saturday, if you have any advice it would be appreciated.

Looking forward to learn from you and in the process help our bees.

Regards

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Hello! I am a relatively new beekeeper from coastal British Columbia, Canada. I started my first hive in March and will be entering my first winter soon.

I look forward to learning from everyone!

Ellen

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Hi Koos, Welcome to the group. Very interested to here how you went with the wild swarms. Africa has a different species of bee to most of us. Do you happen to know which species you have i.e. Apis mellifera or scutellata? I understand that it can be quite difficult to keep scutellata in a managed hive due to their frequent swarming nature and aggressiveness.

@Koos1808 Where in RSA are you based?

Kind regards

Deon

@Rodderick We have two honeybee subspecies in South Africa: in the south, we have the cape bee, apis mellifera capensis, and in the north we have apis mellifera scuttellata, the African bee.

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And capensis has fertile workers, yes?

@Dee Correct. Iā€™m attaching pictures of text I think you might find interesting.

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Thank you
Although Capensis workers lay fertile eggs they are still quite thoroughly policed. Worker reproduction is quite costly to a colony in terms of brood rearing efficiency and loss of hive duties. I have read research that has shown egg policing is as effective as it is in Scutellata. Although Capensis worker laid brood is almost a clone of the worker that laid it, so should be accepted by the colony, there is a theory that queen pheromone marks queen laid eggs and is missing from the worker laid eggs.
Do you ever get worker laid brood above the excluder?