Hi!
I have noticed that in the last month, bees have been up in the flow frames, but have not been doing anything, but crawling around.
I opened the top today after a week and found what I believe to be eggs and some larvae in there.
What do I do??
Thank you!
Are the eggs and larvae in the flow frames or the regular frames? Is your queen excluder in place?
I agree with @chau06 . As it turns out, after close observations of customers hives, you donât want brood in Flow frames. The leftover cocoons will make honey hard to flow. If the eggs or grubs are in the Flow frames, youâd be wise to pressure hose them out, while at the same time check to see if the queen was able to get through the QE, assuming it was in place.
Yes, the excluder is in place. I opened the brood box 14 days ago and someone said that when I put everything back the Queen could have been displaced. lots of eggs and some larvae and a few capped.
Thank you for your input, this is my 2nd season with the flow hive. 1st season they did not bring any honey up to the flow frames and I lost that colony over the winter:(
This colony has made lots of honey in the brood box, but has not brought any up to the super.
lots of eggs were in the flow frames
OK,
you need to try and find your queen- she must be upstairs somewhere. You want to find her and get her back downstairs underneath the queen excluder. Then you can either let the eggs and brood that is upstairs hatch out over a fortnight or so- and then remove and clean the frames- or remove and clean them now. If you are worried you canât find the queen- is there anyone experienced that can help you? You will also want to carefully check your queen excluder for any damage. If you have the plastic one from flow I would recommend getting a good metal excluder instead.
If you have lots of eggs in the Flow frames, I would certainly try to clean them out in preference to letting them reach maturity, because apparently it takes up to 2 hrs to pull apart, clean & reassemble each frame.
Itâs been my observation that plastic QEs can fail after about 18 months. Therefore I would highly recommend replacing the old one.
They are in the flow frames. I read that if there are more than 1 egg per cell, that the worker bees are laying.
I ordered a new queen which is going to come on Tuesday. I took the super off and hosed it out and put another brood box on instead of the super.
Any suggestions on introducing the new Queen??
Thank you
If you do have laying workers, introducing a new queen can present some challenges. There are a number of strategies but they involve some work and are harder when you only have a single colony. Do you have a mentor or someone else that could help you with expertise and resources?
Hi,
Unfortunately no, I will just ride it out and see hoe the colony will react to the new Queen.
Any advice on how to introduce her, she gets delivered on the 13th
There have been some suggestions, maybe from @JeffH about shaking out the bees far away from the hive to get rid of the layers - not sure if this would work to get your queen accepted but if you put her into a laying worker hive I think she will be rejected.
I hope you wonât mind me chipping in. I must point out that I am a new beekeeper since 16 July 21. I thought I was too old at 81 to have a beehive but treated myself last July & have been happy with our Flow hive.
There is a tremendous amount to learn and adsorb if any beekeeper is to keep bees.
I have been successful so far and have a second hive \7 installed a new nuc this June 11th -22. With the 10000 bees came with1000 or so mites. I have now got the better of those and can now see the new colony thriving. As with the first colony I will not expect any honey from this hive.
The first hive is exploding with bees and we have got our first honey from Wollaton Park Nottingham which is a haven for bees. We got 40 lbs of honey but if we had been more patient we would have got 49 lbs,
From the beginning as well as listening to the very experienced beekeeper who sold me the new Buckfast quiet colony which fair enough did have varroa, it had no where near what this new colony had. It wonât be long before all the varroa have been exterminated & then and only then Iâll show this last chap the bottle.
I pay attention to Frederick Dun (you Tube) who had & has Flow hives since 2015. He is a remarkable chap re he is a professional photographer also. He is not a commercial keeper but is an experimenter well worthy of note.
He says that a Flow Hive owner can dissuade the bees to work the Flow hive if there is not a band of honey in the form of at least a Langstroth medium on top of the deep brood box. He waits till the mediumbox on the top of the brood is 80% full of honey. This is exactly what I did.
No honey at all 2021. Check Mar /April for varroa treat May / June 22 inspect and see the correct amount of stores since spring , check health in the bottom brood as a matter of course every two weeks. when the time was right 80% stores in medium install Flow Hive without a queen excluder ( the professionals comment =honey excluder) note within a week the bees are examining the Flow super. Note the bees are not working the Flow super until two weeks later! Note the bees are drawing cells in the side window!
I /we made a mistake in drawing the honey too soon by a short time. Why- because the honey backed up & out of a few bottom cells that were not capped.
I am a retired engineer but I have all my faculties but lack time.
All the time I have left must âcountâ. From the beginning I thought the Open mesh floor was a must in my opinion because I wanted to see what dropped from the bees,
Randy Oliver is researching the Oxalic acid and glycerine impregnated sheet material. He is a biologist of extraordinary capabilities and has a thousand hives to play with.
he is well worth following on You Tube for his Varroa killing methods. Be careful of the bee police as is Harris Joubert one of his âfansâ.
As I said I hope no one is offended by my chipping in. Iâve had a helping nature all of my engineering life & at all times al us engineers love doing is getting things going⌠If we didnât get things going the first problem is we would not have been paid which would have been a big set back.
If I can relate what I did that seems to have been successful I can suggest what I did.
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Thank you so much for your informative reply!
You are welcome⌠I always write the truth as it is re my observations and there is more re the post.
We did a full inspection yesterday of the deep and a half Langstroth hive under the Flow Super. There was a lot of burr comb with honey and I noticed a few cells with larvae as well. I have installed a Queen excluder now.
I am interested how are you going on with the problems you had? You may well have solved the problems?
I think the cells that had brood in them under the plastic flow frames was because the colony was short of room in the deep and a half and of course no queen excluder. Fred Dunn does not use them but says the queen should not go above the band of honey usually the medium.
An efficient honey producing hive needs to have a lot of bees in it. To achieve that new beekeepers have a lot to learn to keep that balance right.
I could kick myself for not using another deep onto the brood deep.
Best wishes.
You probably have already received your queen by now but here is something that might be useful for future reference. Itâs a solution to getting rid of laying workers before introducing a new queen:
The nurse bees (who are the ones laying) have never left the hive and while not be able to come back.
NOTE: I have not tried this method and came across it by reading the book âbeekeeping for dummiesâ