I agree Ed, and apparently up to 3000 bees per hive die every day from natural causes anyhow!
I first used a traditional extractor around 1975. The impression about the Flow frames from the outset (which is one big change I noticed), is that you didn’t need to remove them to inspect before harvest or indeed remove them at all during harvest. You inspect through the back window and harvest through tubes directly from the honey frames. On recent videos, the co-inventor, Cedar, inspects the frames from the rear window and proceeds to harvest. He doesn’t remove the frames from the box to inspect them, and he doesn’t remove them from the box to harvest. This is the same as he has done from the start, from what I understand, so nothing has changed there from what I can see.
Not all uncapped honey in Australia is unripe in any case. It depends on several things. One factor is where the nectar has come from and another one is the atmospheric conditions where the hive is located. I have posted about this on the forum before. If I were selling honey from a Flow hive, or any other sort of hive, I’d use a device to test the moisture content. There are probably rules about it in any case.
Hi Dan, the consensus I was talking about was physically inspecting the flow frames before harvest. That is remove & replace the frames first. Some folks are even removing the frames to harvest the honey away from the hive on account of flooding issues.
Hi Jeff, yes ok. The thing is however, it is not a view shared by the inventor. He does neither, as far as I am aware. He does exactly as he has always done and demonstrated.
Hi Dan, yes, I did a bench extraction of a frame and used to check frames before harvest. That was the beginning of my flow beekeeping, when I needed to understand how it all works.
Now that I know my bees better and keep observing the windows, I pretty much know what the bees are up to.
One learns to judge the water content by the thickness of the honey, yet I check each frame’s harvest with the refractometer.
Of course Cedar knows his bees and flow frames after years of working with them. I agree, there is no need at all to disturb the super for each harvest.
Cedar is an intelligent, educated man; I’m betting he pulls the frames at some point before harvest to make sure they’re good to go, he just does it off camera.
Hi Jeff, I won’t be lifting the Flow frames out to inspect them next time I harvest. I’ll check the back window. I’ll just be harvesting by myself in the backyard.
I’ll just point out as well, that because I regularly check for swarm cells at flow time (if you can call it that here), and I don’t heft the super up without removing the Flow frames (because of the weight of the whole thing), I’ll have seen the state of the Flow frames anyhow perhaps a week or ten days before harvest. I take them out to get the super off to get down to the brood if you follow what I am saying. There will just be no valid reason (for me) to remove the Flow frames (yet again) before harvest. I’ll look in the back window to check it is still full. I sometimes just extract from one frame at a time, and it is also possible to extract part of a frame too of course.
@Red_Hot_Chilipepper… Hi Ed, perhaps Cedar will have done the same thing as me?
I’ll also keep them securely in the Flow super. The bees will have had a chance to bind things up a bit with wax and extra comb to hold everything together nicely, which will be good. I’m really looking forward to it, and hopefully there will be more nectar around this year!
Hi Dan, I absolutely agree with that idea. Much the same as that video Wilma & I made of the flow hive inspection at Eumundi. There would be no point in Sharon or Ian inspecting those frames again if they were to harvest in 10 days time.
The thing that we agreed on during that inspection was that the rear viewing window is not an accurate way to tell when frames are ready to harvest. As it turned out, frames that looked ready to harvest were not ready, while at the same time frames that didn’t look ready, were in fact ready to harvest.
Anyway those two hives belong to someone else now for the giveaway price of $800. Bees, stand, the lot.
I can inspect my flow frames by only removing half of them. Once you have removed one you can see the face of the one adjacent to it. then you remove the one on the other side of that second frame- look at the exposed faces of others- and so on. If you are careful the number of bees that die in the process is minimal. One trick is to remove the lower panel at the rear while you are doing all this so you can see the end panes- align them perfectly and avoid guillotining bees under them. Using the smoker can help. During a main flow I think the rear end panes often tell you if the frames are ready. About the only caveat there is when the bees have left those half moon empty patches earlier in the season. During leaner and colder periods of the season the bees do not fill those end cells as readily and then they can be more deceptive. But the main thing is- every way of doing things has it’s tricks and after some time of using them you get to know and handle flow frames better. 3 years in and they are still a pleasure and I much prefer when a flow hive is ready to harvest than one of my traditional ones. I can harvest a flow hive with absolute minimal effort. So easy. I still think there is no easier way of harvesting honey. I also fully understand that traditional hives have many advantages too and are far more suitable for larger operations at this stage.
Hi Jeff, I have looked at the video and I like it. Thanks! I’ve seen it before actually.
I can say that I see nothing in the video of any concern to me regarding the inspection of the Flow frames before harvest.
I confess to struggling a little to work out the order of the Flow frames and how they were shifted around. The first images of them had two missing of course, and there were edits here and there. That arc of cells that are not capped is common I think. @Dawn_SD has had it I am sure. I have seen it before too. I wonder if that arc left uncapped was from frame 2? Anyhow, Wilma mentions that you would show a little trick to check for ripe and unripe honey, but the video didn’t show it that I could see. I presume it was the shaking thing. Did you do the trick on that arced frame by any chance?
Hi Dan, I’m not sure if Wilma was referring to the shake method or the honey in water test which you can do after harvest.
In the video when we were discussing about how deceptive the viewing panel is, Ian mentioned how he harvested a frame that he thought was ready & got “bugger all”. That frame must have had a large arc that was empty.
The 2 frames that we didn’t show in the video must be frames that we determined were ready or not ready before we put it all back together.
My point being that after determining which frames are ready & which are not, there would be no need to inspect them again, if they decided to harvest them 10 days later.
I found this old post where the capping of honey and the ripeness of it was discussed.
Ripe uncapped and capped frames in a flow hive? Flow Hive Nov 2016
SnowflakeHoneyNov '16 "How many people are experienced ripe but uncapped honey in their flow frames?
I’ve got a flow hybrid super (3 flow frames, 4 wired wax foundation frames) and a flow super (6 flow frames). I’ve noticed that flow frames in the hybrid super are preferentially capped to the flow frames in the flow super. Has anyone else noticed anything similar?
Additionally, in stating the above observation, the uncapped honey in the flow frames in the flow super is ripe. Testing it with a hydrometer showed a moisture of content between 14.5 and 15.5%. The moisture content of the honey in the capped frames was about 15.5%-17%.
My hive has the hybrid super on top, flow super in the middle, and brood box at bottom. The bees seem to preferentially work the hybrid super over the flow super."
Marty commented further on uncapped but dry honey sitting in his frames for a month and Dee commented on why bees might not cap dry honey, discussing things like what else the bees are busy with at the time. I think they uncap ripe honey too at various times, and am not sure if the arc has dry partially filled cells of uncapped honey. I really don’t see a problem if you are not getting the same amount of honey from each Flow frame, or less than expected upon harvest.
Has anyone seen the Italian movie “The Wonders” about the family of bee keepers in Tuscany? (viewable on SBS Australia). This shows some perhaps uncommon problems with conventional harvesting! What I couldn’t figure out was the use of the capping scratcher but yet in the same extracting room, a big fancy bottling machine.