Flow hive yield dropping over time

My steam gun broke before I could try this while soaking, It has a safety compression lid that can not be opened under pressure, and this somehow fused completely to the top of the steamer. I did use it once before to clean out a Flow Frame that had small amounts of debris in it but nothing more major.

This is not normal at all and really indicates that there is more of a fault with the Flow Frames. As even with some sort of blockage there should be some give and movement, at worst we have seen a Flow Frame that is blocked be set to the open position with the key inserted but it springs back to closed when the key is removed.

My initial thought is they have been broken in some way, perhaps dropped or an attempt to open was done when they were fully crystallized, maybe even opening after they had been stored in the freezer. Of course, I only speculate in regards to this. But it does not seem right to me.

This is interesting to read, this would take it to more of a troubleshooting issue that we would need to discuss privately, as I would like the name of the person from who you received these, so that we can check through our system to see if they had an issue that was resolved already or if communication dropped out.

Please do send a PM with this info and we can discuss further also the individual occurrences you experienced with just the odd 1 or 2 columns in a Flow Frame. We are here to helpo :slight_smile:

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I’ve followed the post with a lot of interest and have picked up a few tips and tricks. Hope you can come back and update the thread when you have worked through this offline.

Adam

Of course.

Wait, what? I’m confused, no trouble shooting for the masses Kieran?

I too am following this thread closely and although I have had no issue with my gen 1 and gen 2 Fframes to date am beginning to get concerned that these same issues and leaking Fframes also reported may begin to occur to my 5 year old Fframes and if I do do I raise the subject here or Info @ Honeyflow? May I have some clarification please?

As for the mould in the Fframes, I have had this in my Fframes for the last couple of years and it does not seem to affect the honey in either taste or visual.
And back on topic;
Last season I was still getting +3Kg per 5yo mouldy Fframe.
Oh geez I hope they’re not some famous last words, I’m off to find some wood… :woozy_face:

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Here are pics from my cells. They do not reveal much about the lack of yield on the older frames. The pics are in order of oldest to youngest frames.

I would remove the frames after harvest, then take a close look inside the cells after removing the caps.

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I miss spoke as I believe in this case there is a chance it might be more of an overlooked ‘fault’.

We will be discussing personal customer details privately.

We can of course continue the discussion in regards to Flow Hive yields dropping over time and troubleshoot here, as it is very interesting.

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Maybe there is some cross comb occurring limiting the amount of space the bees have access to on the Flow Frames?

Removing these to examine closer would be good to determine if this is occurring.

The extra wax and honey comb on the viewing end is what makes me think this, there could be a pattern of this throughout the Flow Super?

@Semaphore and @KieranPI how did the trouble shooting go?

Adam

Same problems, put down to Jellybush honey on East Coast of Australia but very interested to see other people having same problems.
I found that owing to the honey being thick the honey was reluctant to drain until the wax capping was broken. I managed to accomplish this using a hammering motion with a stainless steel welding brush. After fracturing the capping the cells were drained and the bees immediately started to clean up the frames and here’s hoping better luck next harvest.
I know this is bad beekeeping practice but if you can leave the frames outside the hive the bees do a marvellous job of cleaning frames.

but it really is bad practice- you can set off a robbing frenzy… Once you have set off one robbing frenzy I can promise you you won’t want to do it again… Much better to put the super on top of a hive if you can.

not that far really - those frames I posted were not my own- they in in Sydney and I am in Adelaide. For the time being they will just be in a box until someone has time to have a really close look at them. For our own frames here- the only luck we have had in cleaning them is to entirely disassemble and scrub in hot water at 75C.

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F… just following this thread. Good observation.

Hi Forum Community

In order to provide some clear insight on this matter, @Semaphore, Flow would like the opportunity to inspect the abandoned set of Flow Frames you have posted in person. Cedar would personally like to take a close look at them in order to find out what is going on and offer some clarity. I will contact you privately with the hope to arrange this.

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Hi
I am in Sydney. You are welcome to inspect. I have 3 hives, 1 year, 3 years and 5 years old. Each with decreasing yield according to age.

Cheers

Nicholas

Please keep us all informed of any outcomes :slight_smile:

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Flow’s based in the Northern Rivers (NSW) so unable to inspect hives in Sydney unfortunately, but we are very interested to see these frames too. If you find that you’re able to harvest (let the bees clean up honey residue), remove and send the frames to Flow (we will of course pay for the shipping), please let me know so I can arrange.

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@Bianca you do realise that @Semaphore is based in South Australia?

Hello everyone following this thread.

Unfortunately we’ve been unable to get our hands on the Flow Frames that @Semaphore posted that Flow requested to see up close in person (Cedar) so we could offer some clear understanding on what is happening with them.

The Flow Frames were handed into The Urban Beehive in Sydney who have just got back to me with the information that they’re unfortunately unable to find the frames and believe they may have been thrown up.

This is a bit of a shame as we were really hoping to get to the bottom of this case.

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