Documenting a Flow Hive in Adelaide- South Australia- First Season

I was worried about there being almost enough room for a ninth frame too. Thanks for the timely advise .

@Semaphore Not sure why but I can’t seem to load the pics from this post. (Noticed that they are over 1mb - the small ones i can see fine - yay) I would love to see the one with the bolts and tuna cans . We are having an ant issue . Is it possible to repost or send me the image? Its okay if that too much hassle. thought I’d ask. thanks Tina
( I hope this attaches to the correct post - Not sure why its coming at the bottom - all a learning curve :slight_smile: )

I had an issue with photos not loading on the web site yesterday. Closing my browser and re-opening the post fixed the issue.

Thanks @Dawn_SD. I tried that , might just have to try on another computer or internet connection - fingers crossed. lol

OK- time for another update- WINTER IS OVER (pretty much).

We did our first inspection for this season to see how the bees wintered. The hive came through winter perfectly! It is bursting with bees- no signs of disease, pests, queen cells, etc. Every frame was being utilised with good stores of pollen and honey. The two outer frames were 100% capped honey and we decided to remove them and added two new plastic frames with wax rubbed on them. I would have preferred to use wooden frames but we didn’t have any handy. By way of compensation we have fed the bees some nectar we had frozen in autumn- though they have quite a bit of capped honey on the other frames- plenty of pollen stores and were bringing in large loads of pollen.

We also put the flow super back on- but first we did some checks on the flow frames to sort out the issue of misaligned cell rows. The tension wires on all our frames were a little loose- so we added a few twists to each wire and moved the bottom wires from the top slot to the lower slot. This only took about 25 minutes for all 6 frames- very easy. Having done this the frames felt much tighter- and working the key around the slot I was able to ensure all rows of cells were correctly in the closed position. The frames are still covered in wax from last season- it’s a little messy- hopefully the bees can easily clean them up and re-use the wax. They smell great!

Here are some photos:

cleaning up the frames:

Capped honey, pollen and brood in all stages:

A new bee is born:

Nice brood pattern:

The Queen Bee!

How does she look? She definitely looked a little older than last year- and maybe a little bigger. She seems to be in good order?

Flow super re-installed:

Bees in the super within minutes:

This concludes the first update for this new season- given how well the hive did last year with only half a season- and how well they overwintered- we have high hopes for this coming spring and summer. Any feedback is always welcome.

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Hive looks good.
Its cold rainy and spring seems to be no where in sight here in SW Western Australia.
I’m not going to attempt a good look yet if the weather forecasts are to be believed. There is considerable blossom about but wind and rain keeping the bees in, bar a few hardy souls.
Today we did have sunshine and light winds and the bees were just teeming in and out, but supposed to be wet and windy tomorrow.

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Absolute beautiful photos Great hosting of what you’ve done as well, thank you for sharing

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Thank you for the update @Semaphore - I cannot put my finger on exactly what it is I love about updates like this but I so do.

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She is beautiful! Gorgeous photos, what camera are you using?

Me too! :blush: It is like following an adventure through time. The fact that our seasons are out of phase makes it all the more fascinating.

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I am blessed with choice when it comes to cameras- as I am a photographer and have cameras for work- and collect old cameras as well- last update photos was shot with fuji x-t1- pretty good little camera. Most of the photos in this thread were taken with a Leica M camera which is worth more than my car…

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Hi,
I live in Henley and would love to see someones hive in action before I order my own.
Is that something someone could help me with?

Thanks.
Peter

Hi Peter

I’m sure that could be arranged once this weather has blown itself out.
It’s horrible here today and the bees have sensibly stayed inside.

Michelle

Hi,

Great. I’m ties up a bit until mid October anyway but thought I’d get
organised early.
I’ll be in touch.

Warm regards,
Peter

Hi what does hermetically wrapped in plastic over winter mean what do you use and how do you use this?

it just means wrapped up in such a way that it is sealed and noting can get in.

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Hi Isabelle, I am in SA too, have my hive but haven’t started yet. I was wondering how your journey has progressed as we have bees in sheds on our farm. Thanks Sally

Sorry Sally. I have not been to the forum for a long time. My bees are going great but I don’t have s mentor which makes things a bit harder. The brood box is packed but they don’t seem to want to move up to the super! Someone suggested I rub burr honeycomb on the frames and that will intice them up.

If u can’t find help- look on YouTube- you can learn a lot- many, many great videos. A good place to start:

Some tips on how to encourage bees to start to use the Flow Frames.

Thanks for that :smiley:

Isabelle Dabrowski

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