Damn it! ... >:(

so I opened up my hives this weekend to see what’s been going on… the flow has been filling up at the ends so I wanted to look inside to see if they have been filling and capping in the middles of the frames…

the bees in the flow have really taken off… it has boomed since switching the standard hive to the flow…

the flow box was so heavy… full of honey but the bottom halves have not been capped yet and there’s still more filling to go… so will have to be careful of when I drain them that they are completely capped… I also put in a queen excluder that I left out originally…

but here’s why I did that…

I opened my other hive first to see how things were going… I was able to get a full frame out of the centre box some time back and was hoping to see it FULL>>… :smile: with filling now into the top…

but what did I find?? :unamused:

the top box very light… not much in it…
the centre box heavy but no full frames…

in fact… the queen has moved up into the centre box and has turned it into a brood box as well… :unamused:
there’s still brood in the bottom box… some frames empty… hardly any honey in it thought… but pollen still…

so I don’t know :unamused:

the bees in my flowhive started off as a couple of groups of ferrel bees that I helped get rid of for a couple of people… with the two groups I didn’t have a queen and they didn’t have any frames drawn… I put in some honey and brood and they made their own Queen…

this hive has taken off especially since I moved them into the flowhive … honey production is high…

but my other hive… pfft… nothing… :unamused:

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Bees will do what they want at the end of the day.

The 2 feral groups would have had honey with them to start anew , they made a new queen and would have fed her well - she mated well and is getting on with it.

The other hive wants to have more brood - which may bring in more honey later but she is still in build up mode by sounds.

Don’t forget the Flow is 8 frame and the 10 frame will work differently - No 2 hives are the same.

My Flow double brood 16 Frame is going great guns to build up - my 10 Frame Poly is quite slow yet they are probably warmer - Go figure

I think I have had a couple of swarms with my original hive before xmas… it all seems to happen when I’m not around…

to try and stop this happening again I replaced the Queen with a Quality Italian Queen…

I thought that I had gotten the old queen out… but then I wasn’t sure if I had got the old queen or a young Drone… :confused:

so I’m not sure whether I’ve got a New Queen in there from the last swarm or the new Italian…

Bee Numbers are steady in this hive but have not Boomed!! like they have in the Flowhive… hmmm

The build up after a swarm and possibly then a cast, will take time and there will not be so much honey as 1/2 the bees or more leave each time with a belly full of honey - your honey effectively flies off - sorry