Have our first bees from a swarm - very gentle crew. They are now in their new flow hive (3kg of bees). We have the entrance reducer in place. Local bee keeper who set up Shoalhaven Beekeepers Club thinks the entrance should be about 2” or double the size with reducer. If we take off reducer entrance is quite long - needs more bees to guard entrance. Any thoughts?
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Welcome Silvia, nice pic! Guess you’d have to cut this handsome reducer to make the opening wider 
but during a nectar flow with an increasing population the larger opening will probably make sense. I never leave my entrances all the way open either, by the way - helps the bees control the internal hive temp. If you do cut it I think a 2” opening is a good size that would work well for the majority of the season.
Speaking of which I don’t know how much sun and heat you’ll have there, but the black might intensify it somewhat. Not sure how much that would matter but in that case you could set aside the black one for your cool season and rig up a different one with a wider opening - or do just a strip across the middle to create two on either side, to allow the bees to convect the air better - that is regular wood tone or painted a lighter color.
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Hello and welcome to the Flow forum! 
That would depend on how big your colony is. If it was a very small colony, a 1" opening would be fine. However, in the wild, swarms tend to prefer homes with a 15 sq cm entrance, which is about 15cm or 6" wide on a Flow hive. You don’t have to use a purchased entrance reducer. Any piece of scrap wood or even foam rubber would work. I have used craft sticks (like ice lolly sticks) glued together with PVA wood glue into a stack that fits tightly. Make sure whatever you put in is a tight fit - bees are very good at pushing them out of the entrance, and they are surprisingly strong! 
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Nice! Make sure that stand is on some firm ground or it may sink in. Also might get a little wobbly when you’re trying to pry pieces apart and lift/replace a full super.
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Thankyou Alok worth noting - enjoyed getting your thoughts
Thankyou Eva - got creative and now have a piece of scrap cedar at the entrance which can be modified as required. Great to get the feedback.
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Great Dawn have done just that - didn’t know about bees being strong and pushing out of entrance - have used the flow hive lock in.
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Hi @Silvia i use the flow hive excluder on one of my hives as it’s just been split and is a weak colony growing.
Here is a view of the entrance yesterday afternoon.
They dont seem to have an issue
Thankyou Daz - took some time to find the videos but very good to see your bees. Thankyou for adding this to the mix.
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