interesting theory… I often though if I was a bee- would anyone notice if I just decided to sip honey all day and was lazy? Perhaps that would be my fate: to be dragged off and dumped as far away as possible.
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That is what I would do - open and close, then reopen to drain. We only got our Flow frames a couple of weeks ago, but when I was playing with them, I noticed exactly what you are seeing - end cells open even when the middle ones are closed. I found that the way to avoid this is to turn the key 3 times when closing the cells - once in the left side of the key slot, once in the middle and once in the right. I don’t think it is slack wires, I checked all of mine and they were tight with 5 twists in the upper wires, and 2 or 3 in the lower. I think it is just a quirk of the design, and means that you have to close the cells very carefully and thoroughly. Not hard, just be aware, as you are now! 
Thanks for posting this though, now I know it was not just my frames doing it! 
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Looking at your frames I would be more concerned with the gaps you have in the top and bottom segments.
When you come to drain the honey it could run through these gaps into your brood box.
Does the gap size look unusual? Can anyone else here confirm? I am assuming you mean the gaps in between the little plastic segments? Our frames felt pretty tight- and our wires are all pretty tight.
I have a feeling we will only be harvesting 1 to 3 frames the first time. It wouldn’t be much of an issue to take them out of the hive for harvesting- just to check how they go the first time- and to catch any leaks. We will be removing them anyway to inspect how full they are. Come to think of it it would be interesting to do it that way to see exactly what happens to the cappping and especially the half open cells, etc.
That’s a good idea, looking at the photo there are definitely gaps.
well I guess my question is: are those gap sizes normal? Looking at one of the photos I posted above you can actually see the bees are already onto this- and have nicely plugged up many of the larger gaps with propolis. Perhapsby the time the combs are all filled out they will have completely ‘propolised’ all the gaps… It’s interesting to see how the bees first plug up the cells with propolis before moving to wax.
As you know, I don’t work for Flow, but from the number of photos I have seen, and from looking at my own frames, I would say they are normal. Given the viscosity of honey and the design of the frames, I doubt very much that you will have honey leak problems.
Bit late onto this blog but am enjoying it. Only a couple of comments:
In the fourth photo of your second inspection there is a lot of propolis on the frame which suggests you are leaving a gap between the frames. I don’t know how bad SHB are in Adelaide but if you did that here the beetles would be able to get away from the bees and cause trouble. As a last job when closing up I always give a little twist with the hive tool on the side of the box to push the frames together. Generally, if the gap is too small for a bee to get into it will cause trouble.
My second comment is a bit general about the flow hive. Its very honey centric with the focus on getting a harvest. As the flow frames are above a QE if the bees have to move up ther in winter for food you really risk them leaving your queen behind with obvious results. If you are going to run a one box brood box then you will have to keep a good eye on resources in that box over winter.
Cheers
Rob.
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Interesting thread. Dawn I found exactly as you did. Running the key left and right aligned the cells more accurately.
To the op; those bees don’t look upset in particular. Upset bees are in the air and active. Weird!
hello Rob,
I think there is a lot of propolis on those frames because they are quite old? They were not the new frames that came with the flow brood box but came from the nuc. Having said that there is a little extra room in the brood box as we only have 8 frames in there. I will check the spacing next time I look in there. Looking at that 4th photo- I can see some comb on the tops of the frames (not propolis)- this was indeed new comb that the bees had added in the weeks between inspections. I think this was partly because the hive was absolutely booming and the bees were running out of room in the brood box. The speed with which they moved into the flow super and started filling out the frames makes me think the hive is doing very well.
Concerning the idea that the flow hive is somehow ‘harvest centric’: this is only true if the particular beekeeper thinks so… The Flow people never said that the flow hive is all about robbing the bees and getting honey- only that it makes the harvesting process easier for you and the bees. We are in no hurry to rob the hive excessively, and have no plans to rob more than you would in any langstroth hive before winter. My mum has joined a local bee keeping club- and is more interested in the entire process- and the health of the bees- than in simply robbing honey. The honey is really a bonus: not the goal. The last thing we want is to hurt the bees. We want them to continue to thrive.
As I understand it is normal practice around here to remove the entire super over winter? I am not sure if we will be doing that yet at this stage- we will seek advice from an experienced local bee keeper. Is this a fairly normal practice across Australia? I had been meaning to ask some of the beeks around here about this.
Sara: I think you have me (the OP) confused with Andrew who posted about his bee bearding after a harvest.
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Hi @Semaphore, not wishing to tell you how to suck eggs but if you hit the @ key and wait some names will come up .If your case sara may not come up, so immediately after the @ start typing sara and the @sara will appear just click on it. When ever you mention an @name that person will get notified some one has made reference to it. Without the @name the person may never see it.
Cheers
busso
thanks for that @busso -
I had no idea- this really is a very well put together forum. The way it displays the high resolution photos is really great- not sure if readers realise -but if you click on the photos above you can zoom right in and get a very good view.
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The good news is I saw it without the little @ and yeah I was confused; -)
I did not mean the second comment to be aimed at you. Its just an observation I have made from many threads. Newbees getting a package then asking when to put the super on. In some ways it would be better if the flow super was sold by itself to go onto an existing hive.
However, the flow super you have is still a danger to the queen and I would remove it over winter so you can monitor your hive without it.
Cheers
Rob.
Dear moderator: If it is possible- could someone move this thread to the flow hive thread instead of here? I think it will end being better suited to that thread and some of the points I am about to make will be of interest there (perhaps).
I think I now know what happened to Andrews hive (pictured above in this thread)…
OK- Update time: First Flow Harvest!
Yesterday we inspected the super and removed one of the central frames. It was fully capped- except for two roughly circular sections in the middle of the frame. The bees had worked these sections with wax- but they were almost completely devoid of honey.
Already there was something of interest to note: It was easier to visually see how full the frame was by looking at the end of the frame that you could see if you had a window at the front of the hive. From this side it was immediately clear that the frame was full. From the back ‘business end’- it wasn’t so apparent.
With one frame out it was possible to check the frame beside it without removing it. This frame was 98% fully capped. The the two outermost frames were not complete but being worked well.
It was time to harvest! We placed the tubes in, and set about cracking the frames. I did this in increments- perhaps a 5th at a time- inserting the tool deeper each time. This made it very easy without much flex in the tool. Within seconds the Honey started to flow!
The initial joy was replaced by a little panic when I noticed honey dripping out of the bottom of the brood box.
Alarm was increased when a trickle started flowing out of the front entrance of the hive:
It was at precisely this point that we heard a distinctive little ‘bleat!’ from within the brood box! The Queen was Piping! No doubt about it when we heard a second distinct ‘bleat!’- from deep within the box, quite load and unlike any other bee noise! Seemingly the Queen was not amused with her afternoon ‘honey shower’!
We had the core flute out for cleaning and quickly put a tray under the hive to catch the honey. The bees started bearding at the front and looking at them you could see little droplets of golden honey splashed on many of them. They furiously set about licking each other and licking up the little river. It was quite surprising but they managed to lick up the entire pool from the entrance in just 5 minutes and made good time at cleaning each other. Good little bees.
There was some bearding:
meanwhile at the rear of the hive the jar was filling very rapidly and the bees showed no interest. The extraction tubes were completely full. After maybe 10 minutes the flow slowed to a steady trickle. After maybe 35 minutes we had approx 5-6kg. The honey was extremely bright yellow with a faint greenish tinge almost fluorescent looking- absolutely delicious reminding me of the distinctive Tasmanian Leatherwood flavor but milder with a faint peppery aftertaste! The honey was perfectly clear with no wax, bee bits etc.
In the end the honey leaking through the hive does not seem to have been a significant volume- there were only a few tablespoons on the tray we put under the hive and the quantity in the jar indicates the vast majority went in there.
However we think that next time we harvest- we are going to crack the frames incrementally (as we did) but leave them for 10 to 15 minutes between increments so the volume and pressure of the honey in the extraction tubes is less. I am also thinking (if it is practicable) it might be good to tilt the hive a few more degrees at extraction time to aid the flow.
By today Mum reports the bees are happily working away, and have already started putting honey back into the two frames we drained. Overall we were absolutely thrilled with the Flow Hive! We love it!
The issue of the leaks seems like it can be managed- BUT- I think if you harvested all six frames at once without doing it in increments- things could get really messy and cause more disturbance. It is possible the wires on our frames could be tighter- we didn’t closely check them before installing them. The bees have also added quite a bit of propolis plugging many small gaps so perhaps over time these leaks would decrease. However I don’t like to think of honey showering through the brood box- but I imagine in conventional hives (when brace comb breaks) and wild hives (think bear attack) this also occurs from time to time and is something the bees have probably learned to deal with aeons ago- and with some care it can be managed or eliminated using the flow frames.
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Great report. We need these, complete with hiccups, so we can learn from each other.
Sound like you may be right about tilting your hive backwards for harvest. A couple of shims would do the trick.
Cheers
Rob.
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What a great report thank you so much. I was thinking the leaking honey maybe the capped honey (above the circular uncapped cells) when you cracked that particular section of the frame the honey may have run down and out of the empty cells from the pressure buildup.
Cheers Tim
Hello,
yes- the honey is either coming out of cells near the bottom of the frame- or through the joints in the drainage tube- or both. But Yes i think you are right that more came out because of those large uncapped empty sections! Stupid but I didn’t think of it. However it gets out- the problem was exacerbated the pressure of the flow. By doing it in increments hopefully the tube would never fill completely, the pressure would be a lot lower, and a lot less honey would escape.
My mum just gave me a heads up that all of this has actually been covered before on the forum back in January. Should have read more…
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OK- Update time: Flow Hive Wintering
winter is literally a moment away so we decided to remove the Flow super and give the bees a chance to store a little honey for the winter in the brood box.
To begin with we inspected the super to see what we had. Having extracted 2 central frames a few weeks ago- we were confident that there would be two others in the middle that were full- and they were- except for some rows where the cells were not properly closed when the frames were installed and which the bees avoided and/or left till last:
(detail: cells in open position)
The two frames we had drained had already been refilled with honey- and sections re-capped- but a lot of the honey was watery nectar, and not ready to harvest:
The two outermost frames were capped and ready- except for the entire face of the frame on the far side (without the window). The inside side of this frame was fully capped- the outer was virtually empty. Seems that outermost face was the bees least favorite place…
We replaced all the frames and drained the four that were ready. After out last experience we decided to do this in increments- a 5th of the way at a time- waiting for ten minutes at least between each increment. This meant the process took a few hours- as we only did two frames at a time- however it definitely worked better than last time with less honey coming out through the bottom of the hive- and the bees seemed less disturbed. We also put a 3cm wood shim under the front of the hive to raise it up a few more degrees so the honey would flow out faster. At no point was the honey drain tube completely full of honey - meaning less pressure and less honey leaking into the hive. I think 100%: this is the way to go.
A little honey got spilled - and a few bees came over to try and see what could be salvaged:
each time a bee would touch the stream they would be dragged down into the bucket. I had to rescue maybe 25 bees from a sticky grave- returning them to the baseboard to be cleaned by their fellows. As the incremental cracking approach takes more time you don’t want a lot of bees drowning in honey. Next year we really want to work out some kind of lightweight manifold so the tubes can be plumbed into the bucket with no bee access. It would be REALLY great if Flow could make a lightweight manifold out of the same material as the little tubes. Even better if it could be adapted to do varying numbers of frames at a time…
At the end we harvested around 8kg’s of really superb honey. Meaning we totaled around 15kg’s in our first Flow season.
Our next task for the day was to remove the flow super: we were slightly concerned about this- how would we get all the bees into the brood box- but in practice it turned out to be a simple affair. We have a large plastic tub with a lid that could fit all 6 flow frames. We took the super off the hive- placing it on the cover to the side of the hive and then removed one frame at a time- giving them a single sharp shake over the brood box before putting them into our tub. At the end only a few bees were in our tub with the frames and we released them. This is how the brood box looked at this stage:
It had been a long day for the bees- but they were well behaved the whole time. We had planned to inspect the brood box before winter- however after harvesting and removing the super we decided it was enough for one day- looking into the brood box from the top it all looked very good.
If you were wondering what those Sirena tuna cans are doing beside the hive- wonder no more: Mum observed several small ants entering the hive in recent weeks- they entered through a small gap at the rear door of the super. When we harvested we didn’t see any ant issues but thought it was time to up the ante- in the ant war. Enter Sirena Tuna. 4 bolts - bolted head down through a wood board, each tuna can with a little oil in it:
Try getting past that Ants! Ha ha.
Ok- that’s it- we just need to put in an entrance reducer and the Semaphore Hive is Wintered (we will inspect the brood once more in a week or two).
It must be awful crowded in that brood box tonight- nice and warm!
We were left with the two frames which were only partially capped. We took these inside with the super box, and drained them on a bench. It was interesting to be able to see what happens when they are cracked. We got around 3.5 liters of nectar- it was definitely too watery to be called honey. Our plan is to freeze this- and feed it back to the bees- perhaps over winter? And maybe make a little mead… ?
Tomorrow we are going to put the empty flow frames beside the hive to see if the bees will get in there and start cleaning them up. After that we were thinking to freeze them- to kill any wax moth larvae, etc- and then store them hermetically wrapped in plastic over winter. Interested in anyone’s thoughts about storing the frames- and how to deal with them next season: I am assuming you just insert them with all of last years broken wax capping on them? Give the bees a good head start?
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Thank you so much for the updates and the superb photos.
Your reports on your experiences will surely help to guide my actions in the future and lessen any surprises.
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