Hi, I had my hive for 5 years.
I could take honey using the Flow system without any problems the first 3 years. Last year till now, my bees keep creating honey everywhere else inside the hive except inside the flow panels. It is like they know. Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks
Hi Jason, welcome to the forum.
This is the first time that I’ve ever heard of this happening. Bees can be slow starting on flow frames, however once they start, they keep on using them.
The only thing I’ve noticed is that after hive beetle larvae activity in a particular area, bees will generally leave that area empty for a while. I doubt if that’s your problem.
Has your population dwindled? Is there enough bees to take advantage of a honey flow if it was to occur.
“bees keep creating honey everywhere else”. Apart from the flow frames, there’s only the brood frames, roof area & around the edges of the frames. Does your colony have a healthy amount of brood? This is where your problem could be: Not enough brood with a poor performing queen, so therefore the bees are storing honey where brood should be.
If your bees are storing honey in the roof, that’s a good opportunity to harvest some good comb honey, or simply cut it out before crushing and straining it.
Yes, this happens to me whenever the population diminishes and there is frame space in the two brood boxes. I remove the FlowHive for a few weeks, check to see if some of that capacity has been used up and then, if there’s enough season left, put the FlowHive back. It also happens in poor honeyflow seasons, which has been the case in my area in recent years. Basically your brood box or boxes need to be at, or close to, full capacity before the FlowHive is put on. Hope this helps.