I have auto hives, honey not flowing. I decided to remove frame by frame and scrap the sides of all 7 frames. Now the bees won’t go back inside the hive
Hello and welcome to the Flow forum!
Any chance you could post some pictures? Also, is your hive a Flow hive, or does it have two holes below the sloping roof?
It is hard to know what is going on without seeing the the hives and the frames. Thank you!
I have the brood box of an “auto hive” in my lounge room, waiting for me to put a colony in after the thunder storms that we’re supposed to be getting have passed.
The customer was so happy with the first colony I put in their first auto hive, they want a second one.
The downside is that they say the honey super is too heavy to lift off, in order to do brood inspections. I told them that they must do brood inspections, only to get a funny look in reply. The bloke told me that they got this type of hive, on account of less hive maintenance. I wasn’t going to argue with them.
@Tamabees , Welcome also to the forum.
Did the frames contain honey coming out of winter? If so, it could be that crystallized honey could be stopping honey from flowing.
There may have been a significant honey spill from under the frames while removing the frames, which is getting cleaned up by the bees. That will cause the bees to stay outside while the cleanup takes place. I have noticed quite a large gap between the bottom of the auto hive frames & the QE, which results in a fair amount of comb & honey, which is the honey I’m talking about.
Hello Dawn,
My hives are flow hives x 2.
Basically I tried to extract honey but it didn’t flow from any of the frames. This hive hasn’t had any extraction from it, approx 8 months +/-. I decided to pull each frame and scrap the side walls in the hope I could get the frames to release the honey. Still no go. This is when the bee’s would not go back inside. It is now day 4 and the majority have moved back into the hive.(a big relief) The sides of the frame after scraping were very wet with honey. I think I might have created unintentional flooding to some sort of degree.
I am very new to beekeeping.I have had the hive for a good part of 4 years now, but don’t really do any maintenance. Slack of me.
Flow hives with the plastic frames stamped “Made in Australia”? Or made in China? They have different construction and smells for the bees. That is why I am asking. A photo of the outside of the hive would be enough to know which one. Thank you
Scraping the sides to release the honey was a creative approach