6 days ago I made 2 splits. Today I inspected quickly as we are expecting rain tomorrow and was happy to find each nuc had made queen cells.
I’ll leave them alone now for 3 weeks and let them do their thing.
Next inspection - hopefully we find mated and laying queens.
G’day from Borroloola NT.
I am so keen to get a hive for my garden. Silly question I know…how do I attract bees, I don’t ever recall even seeing one where I live.
Hi Lesley, welcome to the forum. You will learn about bee keeping as you read through the flow forum posts.
I would think that there is not a bee keeping club in Borroloola.
Are you getting or do you have a flow hive already ?
Before you get bees, do a lot of reading up or do the online course with Flow.
There are 2 ways of getting bees, catch a swarm hopefully with a queen or the most common way is to buy a nucleus (NUC) from a reputable bee supply company.
When you get started, there will be many more questions so continue to follow the Flow Forum and good luck. Regards G.
Excellent pics Fred and with those queen cells your wish is close to being a certainty.
Cheers
That is me today. I’m so excited. This is my first year - I have to paint the hive today then while that’s drying I’ll be putting my frames together.
I’d add photo’s but haven’t worked out how to do that here yet. 
How do the bees stay in the nuc after you doyour split, when the original queen is still in previous hive?
Still learning here. 
They raise a new queen provided you put eggs into the nuc when you did the split.
The mature bees that forage will naturally drift back to their original hive.
The nurse bees will tend to the new brood and eggs (rearing new queens in the process due to realising original queen is absent - lack of queen pheromone), thereby remaining in the nuclear.
The newly emerged bees will orientate to the nuc as that is now considered home.
There are ways to reduce the drift to keep the new colony strong. I haven’t employed this. I’m going into spring, so the new queen will hopefully be productive. I just keep the entrance small so the colony can defend itself.
Hi!! I have a question about bearding. My bees around 4pm this avo where bearding.
It was a warm afternoon around 25 and I popped the sprinklers on to water lawn which touched the hive a little. Could this have cause humidity in hive to make them do this?
Should I be doing anything to help keep hive cooler in warmer months and increase ventilation?
I am going to add my flow super soon, but because it is a fairly new nuc, I am waiting till brood box is closer to full?
Thanks so much.
They beard when it’s hot in both low and high humidity so I doubt it was the sprinkler.
You should probably open up the entrance fully so they can ventilate better.
I would recommend adding a couple of vents in the gabled roof with mesh over the holes and block off access to the roof by closing or meshing over the hole in the inner cover.
How many frames have they built out?
There appear to be some screws missing from one corner of your brood box too, did they not send enough?
They have built out all but 2 frames.
And thanks for pointing out the screws.
My bad.
You should definitely be getting your super and queen excluder ready to put on in the next week or so.
Hiya @eweyfam, my hives are in full sun up here in the hills and have full entrances year round and am surprised to see so much bearding so early especially as it wasn’t really that hot today.
Before butchering your lid with unnecessary (IMO) holes remove the ‘entrance reducer’ as Stevo suggests and see what they’re like tomorrow.
There seems to be a bit more action down in the flatlands and @SnowflakeHoney has been seeing a significant increase in hive weight and could hopefully add some more localised input.
Bearding in spring without the high temps would have me concerned and would warrant an inspection. When was your last inspection?
If you want to reduce the entrance, which is not a bad idea when starting a new colony, do not use concrete. Use rolled up cardboard - the bees can chew it and adjust the entrance if they find it too narrow.
It does look like they don’t need the reducer at all though.
Bearding like that is normally from excessive internal heat in the hive or from too high a population in the hive. I doubt you using the sprinkler on the lawn is behind it. With only 25C ambient temp my thought would be to do an inspection to consider adding the super because of the increase in bee numbers.
My climate is warmer than yours and bearding from heat in the hives is an issue here. I had already put a vent to each end of my Langstroth roofs which made a big difference to the bearding issue. So it was a ‘no brainer’ to add vents to the Flow Hives as well. I taped mesh over the hole of the inner cover.
If your Summers are hot consider improving the comfort of your bees by improving the ventilation.
Cheers
My last inspection was 10 days ago.
Thanks. @eweyfam actually lives in my neck of the woods. I sent a private message last week with a few comments and a link to my posts in the other thread.
@eweyfam How did your last inspection go? Based on our other messages I think you were likely to be putting your Super on soon. Perhaps if you get home early enough you can get in place today.
You’re a few km from me so you could be experiencing something entirely different but I doubt it.
Given the weather forecast it might be next Wednesday before you get a chance to get the Super on and do a simultaneous inspection. If you don’t get the Super on today you could still get it on in the next few days, even with the cooler weather. Just avoid high wind and rain when opening the hive. 20degC is cool but not frigid. So putting a Super in place will be fine as it doesn’t take long to do.
maybe the reduced entrance has caused a traffic jam… hence the bearding…
jokes aside, no bearding here - I’m SoR, but I have my super on also, so there’s a bit more room… for now…
the nectar flow is definitely on, I can visually see them depositing nectar from the rear and side view, so definitely time for super if they are bearding like that now (provided last inspection yielded good results). You could have just had an explosion in population in the lead up to the warmer spring season - was there a lot of capped brood last time you checked @eweyfam ?
