I have one flow hive and not wanting to split the hive to prevent swarming, rather I would prefer to add to my existing hive. Can I add a second brood box to a flow hive, if so when is the best time?
hi Chris
Dave here and first time user on the forum. I too have this same question and am looking at putting a second brood box for the hive.
Have you done this on your hive already… Has it worked…Or what adviced might you have been given?.
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Hello and welcome to the Flow forum! 
We have a resident expert in Buderim - @JeffH. I think that he would tell you that you don’t need double brood in your climate. Jeff runs his hives on a single brood box, and is very successful. Swarm management is paramount though! 
I am not so sure about @Chris2’s situation, as I am not familiar with the climate there. I would ask local beekeepers what they do, and do the same with the Flow hive.
Thank you Dawn… I guess the real question here is i am wanting to split my hive…Its a couple of years old and seems to be overflowing. My thought process was putting another brood box ontop to let the numbers grow. Then remove this box and take to another location and start a new hive… From what i have read this is possible as long as there is eggs, larvae and food etc…
Hi Dawn, many thanks.
Hi @Dave78 , welcome to the forum. I’ve been splitting my strong colonies over the past 3 weeks. I’ll resume the process after this deluge we’re supposed to be getting has passed. In the meantime you can feel free to ph. me, or call around for a chat if you like. cheers
That is not a standard method for splitting. Most people would take half of the frames out of the existing brood box, making sure that you have a mixture of brood, pollen and honey, and put them into a new brood box. Push the occupied frames to the center of the box and fill the edges with empty frames, preferably with wax foundation in them to encourage the bees to build straight comb.
Here is a useful link. Wally Shaw is a world class beekeeper, and although his apiary is in the UK (Wales), the same principles apply all over the world:
This one is well worth reading too:
I read a little bit of Wally’s book, which makes a lot of sense. However, at the bottom of page 6, he says that a colony will make NO attempt to swarm with emergency queens.
I’ve found on many occasions that bees will switch to swarm mode with emergency queens. For this reason I keep the colonies with emergency queens small, especially at home here. After the queens have emerged, then I will boost the numbers with brood or nurse bees, if I’m looking for somewhere to put it/them. However I still get the bees to raise emergency queens with stronger colonies, with plenty of nurse bees.
I agree with Wally when he says to not break queen cells down, bar one. Like him, I like more than one emergency queen cell, which is the reason my bees will sometimes switch into swarm mode.
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G’day Dave. When we get back to suitable weather I’m intending to harvest just a couple of frames and then add a second brood box. Hopefully this will be as effective as splitting the hive in preventing overcrowding and ultimately swarming. I’m on a farm at Royston between Kilcoy and Woodford at the base of the Belthorpe National Park. Cheers