The design uses standard lang boxes. With 2 supers placed side by side plus a flow frame super. Holes are cut between the boxes to allow movement. I realise the bee space won’t be correct around the cutout areas.
There will be follower boards in so I can restrict the area the bees are in, or remove a super if needed.
I already run a long lang and love it. I want to ‘build’ another but using flow frames and don’t want to mess about from scratch.
I have been thinking the same thing, though I didn’t consider just using the Flow Supers, just the frames. But your idea would make bu8ilding it much simpler
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My only concern with using supers butted together is that you will have more than bee space between the frames either side of the boxes and could end up with an unmanageable area of creative comb building. You will also want to make the queen excluders removable for cleaning purposes.
I’m not sure as to why you have the cut out & wire mesh between the left and middle “chamber” can you elaborate on your thinking?
I too look forward to following your progress if you go this way. If you have a search there are a few long langs on the forum with flow frames. @Semaphore was the first I saw build a LL with flow frames and should drop by and add his comments and help answer your questions. You may find that it is easier to build from scratch when you have a look at a few of them.
My thinking with cutting a hole in between the boxes was to allow the queen pheromone to travel easier and for the bees to travel easier to the flow frames. The mesh was purely so the bees would ideally build there and not cross comb the lot!
I have ordered my flow super, just waiting on it to arrive.
My current thinking is I won’t cut anything extra out, just leave a side bit of the bottom board off so the bees can get to the super. Will use it as an experiment and see how it goes.
Harvesting should be as per a normal flow hive, except there will be no shelf so I’ll use a portable step.
The queen excluder will be removable and can be replaced with a solid block in case I repurpose the hive later.
