Has anyone built a horizontal hive incorporating a flow hive ???
Jack (@Semaphore) certainly has - it looks wonderful. He may be willing to sell you one, or do a deal of some sort. 
Do you mean top bar hives?
This may help : Top Bar Hive Flow Forum
And you can also do a little search in the top right of the screen.
No I mean Horizontal that you can fit normal frames into including a flow hive.
ie 3 boxes lined up horizontally.
I have a work in progress, 3 flow frames one end, 4 the other ( do not ask me why!) a divider in the middle to give me two discrete hives
Cheers
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Nice, now you just need to show what is under the hood.
Remember still WIP, I will do a bit more photography once I get a bit further
A bit worried about how close together the two be entrances are but those “in the know” say " just paint them different colour"
Cheers
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Looks great Jeff- can I ask how you did the queen excluders? Also did you go for a solid bottom?
I put a small secondary entrance directly into the flow section so at the height of season the bees can access and exit the flow frames easier.
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Jack,
I did the solid bottom. QX are slotted into a frame around the walls and floor of the hive, you can see the slots are horizontal, I have the covers on the top of the frames that stop the bees getting acrossQX at the top. I have left the split that I did alone, hopefully it will work and be a start for my new hive
Jeff
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Hi Jeff,
I do like you construction and how you have flow frames at either end ( I like that ).
Have you use the flow frames, in other words cracked them open and does it flow ok.
I am probably only going to use it as one hive, rather than 2 separate hives
Looks great.
If I was you I’d be curious to check on that split in a week or two to see what happened. Weathers been pretty good so hopefully it’s gone well. I’ll be checking on my requeened hive in a few days to see if she made it.
Hi Jeff,
How long did you make it, could you fit 16 normal frames and the flow hive frame
in together or was that two many ???
Jack,
I have been holding off for as long as possible and I figure if it has not worked I will not be able to do anything until spring anyway, I have just seen a few bees leaving via entrance , not many but still a few so fingers crossed
Johhno,
14 frames + 4 flow one end 13+3 flow other end. Sound reasoning for the difference- did not follow grandpa’s advice of " measure twice cut once"
I did some math on max number of frames with one queen, I think I worked on 16 max, then I asked whether anybody had consulted bees on the number of eggs laid per day blah blah blah. So I settled on 13 and see how that worked out!,
Just some cosmetic work to go and I will load it up in the Australian spring.
PS you might be able to see in previous photos where I have elevated actual flow frames and not the complete hive to allow for honey running in bottom channel from rear to front
Cheers
Jeff
3 Likes
Jack,
I checked the split today that I did in early May, both the original hive and the split are going well. To be honest I expected more bees in the split, but they look healthy and are building comb. I even found the queen and marked her up. I will do another split in 7 weeks and will split into the long hive and put the " old split" in the long hive as well, I did decide to feed them some syrup today, just in case
Jeff
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Hi Jeff are you still using this hive? How has it worked for you?
Adam
Adam,
No go. I think the hive was just too big. It never really worked.
Too big? Can you all me through your thinking?
I’ve got two with flow frames. 6 flow frames and approx 22 brood frames. Both have worked really well for a couple of years.
Adam,
Do you have two horizontal hives with six flow and 22 brood each?
I think mine got too cold and not enough tucker, I don’t have any science behind my comments, I only stuck with it for about 15 months
Yes I have two with flow frames and have made others with and without flow frames.
It was why Im curious about yours. I dont tend to do any pack down for my winter here south of Perth in Western Australia.
A friend has made a LL with 10 or so brood frames and 6 flow frames. Only a season in after converting his vertical flow hive but seems to be working just as well.
I see you are from around Bunbury , I did a couple of construction jobs at tioxide (30yrsago?) and the gas power station (15yrsago?) nice spot. I reckon your winters would be same as ours in adelaide. What are the two draws on left hand side for? I have had my langstroth flow for nearly 5 years and just spent 5 hours steam cleaning one of the flow frames, I don’t winter my hive but fought some spares so I can change them out when I clean them