Bees slow on the uptake to my flow frames

I just did another hive inspection to find that my bees has converted my intire second brood box to a honey super. They have sealed the gapes in my flow frames but haven’t started storing honey in them yet.
My queen was really running low on space to lay. So I have removed two flow frames and moved 3 of the 8 frames of capped honey up to the flow super giving the bees 3 frames of foundation.
Hopefully the queen starts laying in the new comb that is drawn before the workers fill it with honey.
What do you think?

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Wow, what a gorgeous photo of a totally filled and capped frame of honey (second photo). Sounds like you have done the right thing. Have you put any wax onto the Flow frames at all? If you either rub burr comb or a block of bees wax onto the frames, many people have found that the bees use them more readily. Beautiful country around you in the photos too, so green and lush.

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Try this out if you haven’t already:
http://forum.honeyflow.com/t/how-to-encourage-bees-to-use-the-flow-frames/5099/94?u=rbk

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Worked a treat for me, bees are in within 30 mins.

Both are actually full honey. The bottom of the first photo is only recently capped.

We have had plenty of rain up in North Queensland everything is nice and green and growing fast.

I rubbed burr comb on them. Bees have been up in there for over a month. They have have filled most of the gaps to close up the cells, they just haven’t put honey in. My second brood box was 6/8 frames capped brood with honey each side when I put the super on. Today the second brood box was 8 frames 100% capped honey.

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What do you think my chances are of them building out the foundation and letting the queen lay in it instead of filling it with more honey.

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Try putting one of those foundation frames in the middle of the brood nest and lifting the one frame of brood up into the second box?
Maybe you could do that with two frames even

I would only use one super for brood, it seems that’s all the bees want anyway.

What would I do now? I think I would put the QX above the bottom box, extract the honey & put the sticky frames alongside the flow frames in two supers. Removing a super could encourage them to swarm.

I thought I would show you the outlook from my hive since you made a comment. I have about 40 fruit trees on my 1 acre block. Most are young trees but some are mature. I am also only about 600m from a state Forrest.

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Stunningly beautiful, thank you! :smile:

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My bees started work on the Flowframes after about a 10 days without any waxing etc.

The last two months they have been very busy sealing off the frames. There are lots of bees working the frames but still no honey.

I looked in the super last week and they have now started to build comb with honey on foundationless frames next to the Flowframes.

The season is almost at an end here Chile especially as we have had an early summer so it doesn´t look like I´ll be harvesting from the Flowframes this year. :frowning:

Anyone with similar experiences?

I stuck some flow frames rubbed with burr comb into my hive yesterday and they seem to be working on them already. I’m not exactly sure what they are doing as I haven’t spent much time watching them but there are quite a few of them all the way into the cells. I pretty much did the inverse of what you described - I had a regular langstroth deep box full of honey and three frames of brood. I swapped the deep box with the flow frame deep box, replaced five honey frames with three flow frames and an empty frame with foundation. Best of luck!

why look like your honeycomb such ? so haven’t you flow hive ? it honeycomb is impossible to be flow. it can’t be flow;

You still need to check you comb for the health of your colony and to control swarming.

Any update on your flow super? Did the bees start to fill it? I am running flow hives with just a single brood box and the bees have filled them well. I am also running a hybrid super with a single brood- the bees filled all the standard combs with honey but have been very slow to work the flow frames.

So far we have had the most success with a single brood box and a complete flow super.

@Semaphore My experience is the opposite. I’ve got a single brood, a full flow super, and a hybrid super at the top. The hybrid super gets worked preferentially.