Hello from Atherton in FNQ.
I am new to beekeeping and chose to go with a flow hive, and went ahead and purchased a full set of flow frames and made up a complete hive. I am a retiree and my hobby is woodwork and I have made a number of conventional beehives for various people and a couple of flow hives.
I have a very good friend who has been beekeeping for over 45 years, and he commented to me that he did not think a flow hive was a good choice. I have since had similar comments form several well established old experienced beekeepers. Their comments were based on their experiences with using plastic in their hives, and they assured me bees do not like plastic.
I had a very experienced commercial beekeeper set the brood box up for me, and he delivered the very well populated brood box to me on 1 February. I left the brood box settle for a few days before adding the flow hive super. and then let the hive settle for about a further month. The bees were quite active during that period, and indeed have been quite active every day since then.
Under the guidance of my very well experienced friend, we looked into the brood at about 4/5 weeks, and he commented the brood was very strong and everything was very healthy and normal,
Following that inspection, I observed the hive super box via the inspection window on the rear end of the flow frames, and lifting the roof without disturbing the bees. I did this inspection on a weekly basis. Up until the 7th week, I noted that there were little to no bees in the super box even though there was still very large amounts of activity in general from the hive.
I placed a pollen trap at the entrance to the hive a left it for 3 days and gathered about a half cup of pollen in that time. I have not reset the pollen trap since then.
Up until week 7 there were little to no bees active around the flow frames, and then in the 8th week there was evidence of quite a lot of activity with bees evident in the super box around the flow frames. This activity has continued up to the present time, although it was impossible to see if there was any honey being deposited into the flow frames.
Today I chose to remove the lid and pull a few of the flow frames to see if any honey had been deposited.
To me great disappointment after removing and inspecting every flow frame, there is absolutely no evidence of any honey being deposited into the flow frames, Indeed there is little to no evidence of the flow frames even being sealed with wax.
I appreciate that I perhaps somewhat impatient in looking for a result, but my experience so far is quite negative to the Flow Hive concept.
I would love to hear from other Flow Hive users of their experience from the time they set their hives up, and whether they have had any positive results.