Bee habits and the Flow super

Flow Hive
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Continuing the discussion from How to encourage bees to use the Flow Frames:

I can’t imagine how that would work, as only the queen lives longer than 6 or 7 weeks in the summer. I don’t think there is much evidence that bees pass on “knowledge” efficiently over time, although there have been some interesting experiments with bumblebees that show they can teach other bumbles how to solve a problem.

I think it is more likely that the traditional super has been used before, and/or if it has frames of foundation in it, it smells like a hive. A new Flow super has not been used before and has no hive pheromones. That is why we do tricks like pushing burr comb wax into new frames to make it smell like part of the hive. It worked great for my bees. :blush:

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Hi Dawn, I agree. I know bees remember landmarks etc., however I don’t think that they are creatures of habit in that they get used to traditional frames, so therefore wont work on flow frames because of it. It’s been my experience that bees just don’t like plastic unless it’s coated in wax. They probably are creatures of habit in that they do what they are genetically programmed to do. One example: if they smell smoke, they start eating honey.

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