Hi Jeff I am very curious about the side flexing as I haven’t seen that. Not sure how that happens as the sections slide vertically? I found lots of variation in tension on wires so checked each frame before install and adjusted. We also clean the drainage channel with a long bottle brush as the bees can’t get to them. There is always residue in there.
Hi Eva, the flow hive and all of the gear was gifted to me. I was overwhelmed at the offer, but the lady talked it over with her husband & everything to do with the bees had to go. I told the lady that I would set it up to show people how they work.
It was yesterday when it swarmed, we didn’t get the swarm, it took off into the high trees just after we arrived. @Dan2, we think that swarm was the second swarm. There was no-to very little unripe honey in the flow frames. More than half of the cells were completely empty. The rest fully capped. I suspect that the uncapped honey was consumed by the swarms.
Only 3 of the channels smelt rancid, however we washed them all out with warm water & drained them.
Doing all of this was a real labor of love. Considering the sticky propolis, I doubt that the love will extend to the point of us pulling the frames apart & then rebuilding them to try to tighten the wires.
@Gaz, the whole frames flexed in the middle as I turned the key. It felt impossible to crack any frame in one go, so I did it in stages & that worked but the sideways flexing had me worried for the bees.
There was a dark patch in one flow section where SHB must have got started. Evidently the strong colony was able to overwhelm them & then clean it out. That area was empty of honey, which is further evidence of previous SHB activity.
I’ll let the bees clean up the frames & then decide what to do after that.
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Jeff, did you make a video of your new toy?
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Hi Jeff - on a serious note, I reckon if those channels are washed out with water, they need to completely dry, as once you add water in there, one can clearly create issues. I wonder if the previous owner had done this? What I do is wash them out with a long bottle brush after the last harvest for the year, and then leave them with the caps off in a warm dry place inside for quite some time.
I think it is great that you have these Flow frames and are prepared to show people how they work. Great effort.
Perhaps just an extra twist or two on the wires (if they are slack) rather than rebuilding might help?
The other thing that I have suggested a couple of times before for those concerned about the flooding of honey, is perhaps prior to harvest when it appears all frames are full, remove them one at a time from the Flow super - inspecting each one for readiness, and then remove the box. Place a vinyl hive mat above the queen excluder, put the box back on and then the Flow frames. Harvest. Any flooding honey will go onto the mat where a good colony of bees will not muck around devouring the lot, with not one drop of honey wasted. If it floods over the side of the mat, it should miss the brood and finally go to the corflute slider where more bees will get stuck into it there. After harvest, remove the mat and continue on as usual.
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@Anon, hi Ed, no we haven’t made any videos for about 6 months now. Plus we were a bit time poor yesterday.
Hi Dan, I dried the channels out before harvesting the honey. We probably wont be able to show people how they work like I promised the lady.
All of those things you say to do to prevent honey flooding the brood requires a lot more labor of love than Wilma & I are prepared to do.
Hi Dan, Wilma here, Everything that you have said goes against the original concept of the flow. The wires on the frames are tight. One big thing I had a problem with was all the propolis. It was all over my hands, and I had to use Eucalyptus oil to get it off. I have never experienced that before. We have never had problems with flooding while extracting. We take the frames out of the hives, extract the honey tidy up with minimal mess, and it is done.
Hi Jeff
My experience extracting out of the hive was exactly the same as yours, the flooding and flexing, Flooding I have read about but I didn’t expect that much flex. My frames had not been opened since buying them December 15 (this was the first time the bees had actually finished filling the frames completely ready to harvested, they always filled normal frames in preference to the FF) maybe that had caused the excess flexing, too much propolis? It was really hard to turn the key, I think it would have burst apart had it not been held in place by the other frames. Anyway will try them this summer since the bees are now using them and see how it goes. Cheers Tim
Hi Tim, I think the flexing is just a matter of physics. I think it’s the wide space that the key is available to move in, could be the problem. It was when one frame pushed against the other & actually made it move, that I gritted my teeth & thought of the bees. It would be dead bees in the honey super that the beetle laid eggs in that caused the dark patch on one of the frames. Once the bees have cleaned them up, I can get Wilma to take a photo & post it here.
The big issue around here with killing bees & honey spills is the SHB. Apart from that, we don’t want to kill ANY bees unnecessarily.
I am more than convinced now that we’ll get more spills with wet cappings than dry cappings. Upon closer inspection this morning, I could see the honey spills down the side of the trough, exactly the same as that photo of @Heron’s.
Hi Jeff and Wilma, here is another idea then which I thought of, which hopefully might be more appealing and serve a dual purpose. This a photo of a bee escape board that you could put under the Flow super prior to harvest.
Firstly, as the bees will vacate the super and can’t get back in, you wont crush any with your flexing frames.
Secondly, the steel surface will prevent all the flooding honey from going down onto just about all the brood. Nearly all the honey will drain through the corner perforations and will be gobbled up by the bees on its way to the corflute. After harvest, you can flip it over for a few minutes for the bees to lick up the residue on the surface before removing it completely.
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Hi Dan, that looks like a great idea. It would certainly prevent honey from leaking onto the brood plus it would save bees from getting squashed between flexing frames. The honey that dripped onto baking trays yesterday, plus the honey that leaked through the drip area onto another tray during the night added up to quite a bit of honey. I would hate to see that amount of honey dripping out of the corners, way more than the bees can cope with, in my view.
Me setting up the flow hive as a show hive, with that strategy in mind, definitely goes against what a prospective flow customer would have been recently told, or led to believe.
Only this morning a new flow customer was here to order bees & wire up his frames etc. He got a bit deflated after finding out our results. We convinced him to do something similar to @Dawn_SD. He felt much better after that. He is 80 years old, I’m not sure if he wants to be lifting heavy honey boxes before harvesting the honey, while he originally thought that harvesting the honey was a matter of simply turning the key. He paid the premium to be able to do that.
Hi Jeff, it sounds as if you did have an unfortunate amount of honey leaking.
I meant to caution against in any way lifting the Flow super with honey in it. I think RBK, who used to post here, calculated that the Flow frames held 30 per cent more honey that a conventional frame. They are really heavy to lift and almost guaranteed to wreck your back if you try and heft off the super with full frames all together. I dropped mine when I did that and the bees gave me a caning for it too. One frame at a time is the way to go, and if the escape board placement is done at the same time as the frame by frame inspection, then it should be sweet. They are a beast of a thing size wise and that is one of the reasons they can take time to fill. There can be a stack of honey in them. You don’t want to be lifting a honey filled Flow super at 80 years of age!
I quite like feeding bees, a little bit like feeding chooks or a dog I suppose, and I am amazed by how quickly they can eat the honey eg. when I put poorly extracted conventional stickies back in a super above the hive. If a hive can fill enough of the Flow frames to warrant a harvest, the hive is probably pumping and should have good numbers to get stuck into the honey.
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I have 3 active flow hives and never had a flooding problem. The first frame from my first hive was leaking, but it was not fully capped and the wires on top of the frame were not centered and the frame had a slight bend in it as I later discovered. Couldn’t wait with harvesting. Many bees bearded around the hive entrance and I heard the queen tooting a warning.
A pull on the wire fixed it. I didn’t notice the bend when I set up my first hive. Now I know how it all works.
My second flow hive had loose wires. I had to tighten all of them.
The third hive had perfectly set frames.
Before the flow frames go to the bees, I rinse them in case there is some manufacturing dust or something. After drying, I open the cells to see if it all functions properly and set them into the closed position 3 times, to be sure. Then I align them carefully in the box.
It pays to get this right from the beginning. Once the bees start their work it sure is harder to correct things.
I have seen first flow hives of other newbies and noticed that more often than not the flow box has not been assembled with care and understanding. That can give rise to problems later.
Had I not tightened the wires on my second lot of flow frames, I expect I would have ended up with major honey leaks.
My next flow frames are still in boxes. Now that I know what to look out for, they will function as described by the inventors.
I always only harvest 1 or 2 frames per day, in increments. If I ever had leakage, then only a few drops. The bees never get agitated any more and I never find honey on the core flute. Not even a drop.
Perhaps your customers with the flow just need to be told to take good care with assembly. And ensure those wires are tight, top and bottom.
And before you use your probably badly assembled flow hive to show and tell all your customers how bad it is, take it apart and see where the fault is. That’s only fair. No need to disassemble the frames, just check that it’s all in alignment.
After all, flow hive honey is and tastes the best. Pure and raw, unspun, unfiltered, unheated, unstrained.
For some people it’s not just an expensive toy. Some people save up to be able to get this superior honey from their own environment.
Yes, a full flow super is heavy, but so is any full super. Dawn’s method helps.
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This is a good point. Studying and understanding the way the whole thing works is probably very important…you make some great points here @Webclan and it is pleasing that you have passed on the knowledge and experience you have gained …hope new Flow owners read your post…before assembly…
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Hi Webber, It is Wilma here. We have no intention to use the Flow hive we have to tell our customers how bad it is. It just so happened a customer turned up while Jeff was preparing the Flow Super, to put on top of a hive for the bees to clean it up. I encouraged him to use and enjoy His Flow Hive. The problems we found with the frames, were exactly what happened to Heron, if you have a look at his photo on this thread. The frames were all straight and the wires were tight, and everything looked good, until we turned the key to drain the honey. The first frame we opened in stages, and the honey started dripping out underneath almost immediately. We only published our findings.
It’s a mystery how that can happen. Something must be wrong with those frames.
I would be curious to know why the frames disfunction so badly if they were mine, that’s all. It’s not normal or intended to be so. Just trying to be helpful by relating my experience.
Why do you say Sunshine Coast honey is not suitable for flow frames while Byron Honey is? That’s highly unlikely considering similar climate and vegetation and variations in honey in different seasons.
Thing is, we hear the 3 complaints loudly, while in the meantime thousands of flow hivers harvest honey quietly without a problem.
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@JeffH and Wilma, I can understand your aggravation, it sounds like you were not given a gift, but more a curse. Respectfully, I’d suggest that your problems have less to do with Flow technology and are more the result of folks whose initial excitement about beekeeping (willingness to spend $$ on a Flow system) quickly (Flow is still quite new) changed to ‘not wanting anything to do with bees’, as you’d mentioned. If these folks had already been conscientious beekeepers like you, I don’t know why they’d say that after one unhappy experience with a new gadget. I can’t help thinking that some important steps were missed in their assembly and usage, given how impatient they sound.
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All the cells must be capped or there will be leakage, simple fluid dynamics, the path of least resistance.
I had no visible honey leakage when I harvested earlier this year I did notice however, that the centre frames drainage channel filled when I harvested the one to the right of it. When I tested the mechanism after I removed the super over winter I was surprised how much the frames did flex in the hybrid and think the flex was bending the centre frame causing the cells to rupture and drain into the channel.
I have added some bracing screws securing each corner of the set of frames and now have minimal flex so will see how it goes next time.
I am a hobby beekeeper and like the Flow system, I’ve found it works with a little care and understanding. If I’d extracted as many regular frames as Jeff has done, experience would be my friend and decapping, spinning and cleaning up wouldn’t seem such a chore. Having a hybrid means I will still need to extract in the traditional way and quite frankly without that experience it is a chore. 
In the meantime I’ll keep my eye out for a cheap 2nd hand quality spinner and extract with the turn of a key. 
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Hi Eva, I still count it as a gift. Not a curse at all. I don’t feel any aggravation, it’s all academic & an education. It’s good for me to get a more close up view of the flow frames, to study them to see what is happening while in operation, so that I’m better informed.
@skeggley, it’s apparent that the majority of the leaking came from above the channel as the capping separated on the fully capped area on the “wet” cappings, exactly the same as the leak in that closeup photo of Heron’s. The leak was basically instantaneous. On the first frame, I cracked 1/3, it started dripping in that area. As I cracked the next 1/3, the leak started there & so on.
The flexing that I observed occurred in the middle of the frames. The 6 frames were all secure in the super while we cracked them open to harvest. There was no movement on the ends, just bowing in the middle.
One thing we didn’t even remotely anticipate, was handling the frames with sticky propolis everywhere. You just don’t get sticky propolis on normal frames.
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-this is great Jeff. Keep at it please. Do have a go with your own bees if you feel you can, and see how it goes. If you have a bee escape you might want to try my suggestion, but it sounds like you are too concerned at this stage with the leaking honey …fair enough. I must say, none of the matters that you raise concern me at all with my Flow hive and harvesting, but I am concerned by the fact that these things concern others and that they are disappointed - hopefully a simple bee escape might help. Anyhow, I guess one thing comes from it…at least the bees put honey in the Flow frames in the first place for it to leak out 
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Yes for sure Dan, I have never heard of any complaints with folks having trouble with bees filling the frames around here. I always start them off with young mated queens & lead them in the direction of wax foundation frames. A strong colony will always insure that the bees get stuck into the flow frames during a honey flow.
Dan, I know that the bee escape board will work. I wouldn’t set the flow frames up for my benefit. It would be purely for show. If I show potential flow customers, or worse still, recent flow customers a working flow hive, then explain that they need to use a bee escape or build an external extracting table before harvesting the honey. That would be a pointless exercise because they will turn around & say that that is not how the flow hive is supposed to work.
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