Hi I am thinking of starting a hive. My brother, about an hour north of me, now has 4 hives and is so enthusiastic about them. He located " trap" on our property which now seems to have a colony. He has since captures several swarms on his own property and now he has too many for his own hives and is suggesting I start my own. I was wondering if anyone near me has experience with the Flow Hives My brother has only the traditional hives.
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Firstly a big welcome to the forum where you will get heaps of good advice. First off before you do anything I would check with your local authorities about any restriction in bee keeping in your area. Maybe there is a limit on the number of hives for example.
Bee keeping can be time consuming and a lot of pleasure from keeping bee and producing your own honey so beware it can be VERY addictive.
I have both Flow Hives and traditional Langstroth hives and there is valid points for and against both systems. Both systems are basically the same till it comes time to extract the honey.
Extracting from a Flow Hive is quicker and easier once you get an idea of the easy to make mistakes sorted out and there is no big added expenses involved. With a Langstroth hive getting the honey into jars is more time consuming and can be as expensive or as cheap depending on how you want to extract the honey.
A little cynical maybe, but I need to say that most bee swarms happen because of a slack attitude by bee keepers who seem not to care about their hives swarming. So please don’t regard bee keeping is only about a hive producing honey for you to use.
Cheers