Hi all from Melbourne, Australia. We’ve recently noticed zero movement in our flowhive & lots of condensation inside it. Obviously that’s quite common place moving into winter but just wondering if we should remove the flowhive for winter as it’s clearly not being used & on our last inspection ( 9/April '22) there was almost 2 full frames of honey leading into late autumn in the standard super. Currently there is 1 brood box, 1standard super & the flowsuper on top. Any experience in this would be greatly appreciated. See photo Kindly Jo & Mark
Hi from Perth,
I’ve got a brood box with QE on top, then a box with 10 frames and the Super on top. Over the past six weeks the bees have been taking honey from the Super and storing it in the frames below.
Yesterday I drained the seven frames in the flow super (3kg) And stored those frames in some plastic bags to freeze for a couple of days.
Then put back the inner cover and roof.
That should keep the bees happy over winter, they’ve got plenty of honey stored in the 10 frames in the second box. We don’t get freezing temperatures in Perth but I’ll monitor this as the weather always seems to be changing and the only thing that I might consider if the temperature drops to 2 or 3 degrees is pop into Bunnings and get a piece of insulation board cut to the size of my inner cover to add that little bit of insulation to the hive.
The main reason I took the Flow Super off was to reduce the area that the bees will need to keep warm.
i would remove the flow super for sure. I made the mistake of keeping mine on and the bees absconded
Thankyou Heddyjan. Yes same reason, we wanted to keep the hive as warm as possible for the winter but not starve them at the same time ?
You can always feed them with a 1:1 sugar syrup. Dissolve with boiling water (but don’t boil the mixture) cool and put into zip lock bags and gently score the bags so that the bees can take as much or as little as they want. If they need it they will take it. Before Spring feed them some bee patties for an extra boost !!
Thankyou John, I’m hoping they wouldn’t abscond at this time of the year in Melbourne ? Then again we really need to inspect the hive to make sure of that, In saying that we might as well remove it completely when inspecting it do you think ? If there is capped honey still left in the flow frames what recommendations would you suggest for storing it for the winter ? Could we leave the flow hive complete in a cool room of the house till spring, etc ??
Hi Heddyjan,
If you’re feeding sugar syrup, usually the 1:1 ratio is for spring, not autumn or winter (2:1 or thereabouts - it’s worth doing some research). There’s a thread with more information running as I type.
2/1 Winter and 1/1 Spring.
I’m hoping that our winters here in Perth will not be too severe.
I am not an expert. I will leave that to the Jedi knights