Don't just rely on the view from the end frames to ensure all cells are capped

Hi Oatkir. This is exactly what happened to me today. I drained two frames and cracked them all at once and I had a downpour of honey through my brood box and out the bottom of the hive. I ended up with very upset bees bearding out the front of the hive all afternoon. I had initially thought I’d perhaps not set the flow tube into its slot properly, but reading your post in wondering if this was my problem. Hmmm not 100% sure though.
Here’s a pic of the honey flowing out. Damn!

Hi All,

We designed the core flute slider to move to the upper slot so if there is dribbles from any frames they stay within the hive and the bees lick them up through the screened bottom board and re use the honey. Best to remember to move the slider to the upper slot before you harvest. Here is a how to harvest video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z54bL6kjyOI Perhaps we need to put out a “before you harvest” checklist.

Our experience is sometimes you get dribbles out of the Flow frames and sometimes you don’t. This depends on many factors such as: The viscosity of the honey which changes with honey types and temperature, how the bees have capped the comb and the slope you have on the hive. The more slope you have the faster the honey trough can clear and this means potentially less dribbles of honey from the Flow frames in the hive. This is more important with less viscous honeys.

Great to see some honey harvesting!

Please send any videos or pics to me at info@honeyflow.com, it’s really great to see.

Cedar

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thanks @cedar!
I noticed my round caps were being propolused, which meant that any leakages from the frames were not going down the grooves on the back of the caps. The gap between the inside of the hive and the trough, where the honey is supposed to drain into the hive was also propolused heh.

will send you photos of my first harvest at the end of the month! cant wait!

Background:
We are in Victoria, so are working towards an autumn packdown.
I am a new beekeeper, this has been our first harvest.
We have a single deep brood box, and the flow super.
Our plan has been to extract the flow frames as they are ready, and replace 2 flow frames with 3 wired wax foundation langstroth frames, so as to allow the bees to fill those new frames as we move through autumn. Then to pack down to a single box, as is common in this area, I’ll be able to choose the best 8 frames from the 11 available for the bee brood box.
Our Experience
From 3 frames extracted we got only 4kg honey, which seemed low. I removed the 2 extracted flow frames from the hive the day after extraction. I was surprised to find that about 1/4+ of these frames were filled with honey. Even after opening the frames with the flow lever a second time, still some honey was not flowing out. Some honey was leaking to the bottom of the frames. After shining a torch up the channel were the flow lever is inserted, we could see that the cells had not remained in position vertically, some , perhaps under tension of the wax cappings, had moved back down a bit, perhaps enough to retain cell integrity and not release the honey.
Solution
We found that by leaving the flow lever in place in the frame while the honey flowed out, all the cells remained cracked open, and the frames drained fully. Unfortunately, since we only found this out after removing the flow frames from the hives, the bees won’t have time/ opportunity to clean up the lower channel before storage.
I plan to freeze the frames for 48 hours, then wrap and store over winter.
Others might find it useful to leave the lever in place through extraction to ensure all the honey is released. We will in future.

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as I drain a few frames at a time I couln’t leave the tool in both frames. I do tend to leave it in one of the frames. However what I generally do when I crack the frame is I work the key in both sides of the slot- and the center- and a few times. I do the same when I re-set the frames after harvesting. This is just to ensure all cells are broken- and then all columns are re-set.

Another thing I noticed: sometimes a frame can be full but the cells at the end where the clear window is are not all full. sometimes there are bees in those cells whan it is time to to harvest. To stop them getting crushed or trapped in the works- I tap on the window with my finger nail to get their attention- then I insert the key and just jiggle it gently without fully turning it. this starts the cells moving and generally with a few wiggles all of the bees in cells will back out- and then you can turn the key completely!

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Great suggestions. Thank you