Hello everyone, my name is Gez from Southern Tasmania.
Question; About extraction & bees getting into seperated cells whilst extracting.
Does the flow frames break the capping on the cells, and can bees get into broken cells whilst extracting.’
Hello everyone, my name is Gez from Southern Tasmania.
Question; About extraction & bees getting into seperated cells whilst extracting.
Does the flow frames break the capping on the cells, and can bees get into broken cells whilst extracting.’
Flows YouTube channel has a good video on this and explains the design of the flow frames that takes this into consideration
Do you know the name of video? Just had a look…heaps of videos.
Welcome to the forum where you will find lots of reading and folks happy to pass on advice, tips and information.
I hope my answer doesn’t bring a reprimand but I feel like answering your question.
I filter all of my honey from both my conventional hives and my Flow Hives and have found not just bits of wax but also the odd bee part as well.
Doing an extraction of conventional frames using an extractor taking out the frames and reassembling the hive no matter how careful you are you have to accept some bees will be killed.
Bee deaths will be much less with the Flow system but if a cell capping tears when the cell is actuated to drain rather than just flex then a bee could enter the cell as it drains.
Have a look at this photo and you will see two distinct cappings. I experimented with frames early on and found the white/drier capping where more likely to tare. But of course bees will do what they want to do.
Hope that answers your question.
Cheers
Hi Gez yes to both your questions occasionally, but rarely do we find anything big enough to even warrant filtering the honey.
If you open the cells in 100mm increments and monitor the corflute for any large leaks you won’t have any issues. The bees can move easily even if they were to be in a cell that was uncapped.
Good luck.
Cheers
Found a perfect video on YouTube.