My aim with my honey is to be as consistent as possible for my customers so they know what they are going to get, the same as last time, or as close as I can make it.
I guess we have all heard of the theory that Flow Hive honey doesn’t oxidize, has more aroma retained, etc but how much is based in fact and how much is subjective.
Last year I went to my local show and saw the honey judging were the jars were held up to the light, I guess for clarity, and inverted, I guess for the viscosity. No tasting or smelling of the honey but color could have been taken into account.
Cheers
Wilma did say that the honey we harvested out of the flow frames tasted beautiful. It was probably beautiful tasting honey that would have tasted beautiful regardless of how it got extracted.
I wont say the other thing Wilma said in relation to harvesting honey from flow frames after working with me for 30 years in the dining room extracting with my 2 frame hand spinner.
3 Likes
I understand completely. Spinning Days are wonderful, and I do like the process and don’t mind the clean up since I developed a plan with help of my European beekeeping family.
All that beautiful aroma in the air! You wish you could bottle it. 
1 Like
Isn’t that a wonderful experience? I think those flower notes stimulate your brain to produce seratonins.
What also stimulated my senses at Apimondia were some of the brilliant inventions…here is a video of a new style of pollen trap mesh design…developed in South Korea by Mr. Kim.
And his FB page that shows more recent videos:
Pollen plugging out honeybee broodnests is an issue for me and I’d like to adapt his design for my conditions.
1 Like
Wanted to bring one of these home with me:
1 Like
Hi Doug, from the video I couldn’t really see how it works.
In Australia, so far we were only able to purchase these Chinese yellow and brown plastic traps. I wasn’t happy with them at all and trashed them.
I squeezed 2 Sundance pollen traps into my suitcase (with great difficulty) on the trip back to Australia. Got them all painted by now and ready to employ. Heard they were the bee’s knees?
I’m still exploring how it works. And have to adapt the traps to my bottom boards as yet.
I see there are certainly times where reducing pollen intake is warranted, never heard of pollen plugging, but hey, there are many uses for pollen. I sure had to remove full pollen frames occasionally to give space for Queen business.
I mainly collect pollen for nerdily looking at it under a microscope.
And the bee bread machinery… I’m onto another one to yours I think, but worth looking at.
Thank you for sharing your impressions, it all brings it back to me.
I wish next apimondia wasn’t in Russia. I heard many won’t go, but some said they will. Guess numbers will be way down to Montréal for sure.
It’ll be a long wait for apimondia in Chile.
Yep, or in my case friends and rellies 
As in lawn bowls I always think my bowl is closer to the kitty. 
3 Likes
I get your reasoning- but- we have had such success entering our honey into competitions that we start to wonder if there is something about the way the flow system works that preserves a touch more flavor than other methods. This year I took out overall show CHAMPION honey at the Royal show with my mothers honey coming second place RESERVE CHAMPION. There were well over 200 entrants and the judges had no way of knowing whose honey was whose. So I think it was kind of remarkable that mum and I took out first and second.
I have won more awards with flow honey than with honey I have spun- though I have won with both.
Perhaps less of the volatile smells esters are lost?
Obviously- the most tasty honey of all should be 100% virgin capped comb- no foundation used. I also make that- and it really is something special when you bite into a fat fresh piece.
4 Likes
I believe the Royal Easter Show created a separate category for Flow honey because it is less waxy and because it is easier to harvest a specific variety of honey (e.g. eucalyptus or lavender or whatever) since the bees tend to fill one frame at a time so that the flavours remain distinct as the season progresses and nectar sources change. Well done honey champions!
1 Like
Jack, that’s amazing! Congratulations 
I’m just getting the hang of honey competitions, usually struggling with clearness. Still, I took out 4th at the National Honey Show at the Gold Coast Congress (should have been third, but that’s another story). That was my first show and I entered the honey just as it comes out of the flow frame. 
At the Sydney Royal Easter Show I won 2 thirds, one in the open very light honey, the other in the flow category.
And then the silver at apimondia, the crown of my efforts.
It’s like taking your kids to a nippers competition. And it helps honey sales.
@Peter48, honey judging is done differently all over the world. The larger competitions in Australia have a point scoring system.
Highest possible points score for flavour is 25. Density 25. Colour 25. Clearness 10. Brightness 5. All adding up to a possible 100.
Density is determined by refractometer.
It may be that a small local competition looks at fewer factors, but that’s not really enough.
At apimondia, after the lab testing, they somehow used a process of elimination. Nobody was able to give me a clear explanation. There were result sheets, but no judging sheets. But flavour is the most important I was told.
3 Likes
Hi Jack, congratulations are definitely in order. A just reward for a job well done. I’ve never bothered with showing honey. I know you can put a lot into getting your entry right. There’s a whole chapter on the subject in one of my earlier bee books.
1 Like
they use a hundred point system at the Royal show as well- only I am sure that flavor is one of the factors- and to me it has to be the most important factor I would think? Perhaps flavor comes under ‘aroma’. We now strain our honey when we harvest from the flow hive- by putting the strainer in-line with our bucket and tube system. the strainer hardly catches anything but it does get a few particles out that could be the difference between champion and ‘could have been’. A pro tip: always make sure there is NO honey on the underside of the jar lid- and fill the jar to that glass line exactly- the one that sits directly beneath the lid. It’s the little things that make a difference. we don’t obsess about it but so far it seems it be working. Taking out Apomondia is huge- definitely one for the record books. Well done too!
I have found it worthwhile to enter- the prize money is better than a kick in the teeth- and customers are certainly impressed. It helps with marketing. And it’s a bit of fun.
3 Likes
Yes, for flavour you can get maximum 25 points (of 100) and aroma max 10 at the Sydney Show. They do differentiate between those two, but each competition seems to weight it differently. At the National Show, both flavour and aroma could achieve up to 25.
One would think that a country like Australia had a more consistent system.
1 Like
I know Emily Grace (Flowhive team) is persuing the quantification (chemical analysis) of Flowhive honey versus non-Flowhive honey…so it will be interesting what she finds.
2 Likes
If you click on the Facebook link (and if you have a FB account), you can view the technology. What I found fascinating was the small wire hoops the bees have to crawl through. This contrasts significantly with the two-layers of hardware cloth the bees have to crawl through on traditional pollen traps or the plastic surfaces that have been bored out with numerous holes on more recent models.
I think you will like your Sundance pollen trap…no debris from the hive above falls into the pollen tray…a big plus as it eliminates most of the pollen cleaning process.
2 Likes