Hi Melinda,
This thread and the two comments above should address some of your concerns. However, if you can tell us what specific concerns or negative aspects are bothering you, perhaps we can provide some input. Let me go through the 3 “reasons” from the article above.
- “Plastic is bad”. Hmm, well, some people will say this, and you will never persuade them otherwise. However, many commercial beekeepers have been using plastic foundation for years, and if the bees didn’t like it, they wouldn’t use it because it would hurt their business! @Michael_Bush is a very well-known and highly respected natural beekeeper who has used plastic in the past and may even do so occasionally, if I read his posts right. He may prefer other methods, but bees work on plastic too. About the alleged “off-gassing” - unless they have tested the Flow plastic, I wouldn’t believe that. The Flow team have very carefully picked a food-safe, high quality plastic which is BPA-free. The communication disruption comment has not been an issue in the test hives - insufficient evidence on that being a concern. So overall, let’s see some evidence before they trash the plastic!
- “No communion with bees” Totally wrong, incorrect and inaccurate. Flow hive beekeepers will have to do as many full-hive inspections as any other beekeeper. You still have to check for diseases, swarming, queen productivity, brood box stores and health etc, just as you would with any other hive. I will be checking my lower brood boxes at least monthly, and even weekly during certain parts of the season, just as I would with a traditional hive. The Flow technology will not affect my interaction with bees at all - it is purely and simply a different method for extracting honey.
- “Expensive gimmick” This one is clever and tricky. At first glance, the Flow hive is expensive. $700 for a full hive is a lot of money. You can buy a similar western red cedar hive (from www.beethinking.com) for less than $250, without the Flow frames. So now you have to ask yourself, do you want liquid honey, or comb honey? If you want only comb honey, you don’t want a flow hive, as all of the honey will be liquid from the Flow frames. If you want liquid honey, then you have to ask yourself how you are going to get it out of traditional frames. There are many methods for this, all of them involving additional equipment, lifting and a lot of mess. Let me go through two of them. First the “crush and strain” method:
i. Get the bees out of your full honey super. You can brush them off individual frames (hard and unkind), then try to keep them off while you brush the other 7 frames - not easy. You can put a bee escape below the super, and let them move down either with chemicals or over a day or two (but you have to lift a 50-70lb super of honey to do this, then lift it again to take it for extraction). There are other methods, but none are easier than the bee escape, in my humble opinion.
ii. Carry your heavy (50-70lb) super of honey away from the hive to your honey extraction location. You don’t want to extract anywhere near the hives, as this can set off a robbing frenzy and eventually kill your colony.
iii. Buy 2 buckets, bags, strainers and honey taps for the crush and strain method (around $100).
iv. Cut the comb out of the frames (you did use non-wired foundation or foundation less, didn’t you?) and put into the top bucket. Mash the frames throughly and sit straining for 24 hours or so in a warm place.
v. Open the honey tap and take a look at a sample - if it is full of bits of wax, buy a fine strainer and another bucket ($50 more) and re-strain it.
vi. Return the crushed wax to the inside of the hive for the bees to clean up (messy, but who wants to waste good honey?) then finally remove, and use the wax for your own purposes.
So that is crush and strain. Only $150 more, but you destroy the honeycomb, and it is not very efficient at extraction. Probably good enough for many people, but time-consuming and messy.
Now onto centrifugal extraction.
i and ii. Follow steps i and ii above. Watch your back with the heavy lifting.
iii. Buy an uncapping knife ($100 if you want electric) a centrifugal extractor ($300 from eBay if chinese electric is OK with you) and a set of buckets with strainers (another $80 or so).
iv. Uncap the frames, catching the capping and honey. Spin frames then capping in the centrifuge until honey is extracted.
v. Return “stickies” (mostly empty frames with leftover honey drips) to the hive for the bees to clean up and reuse.
The advantage is that the bees can reuse the honeycomb, because you didn’t destroy it. The disadvantage is that it cost you another $480 on top of your $250 hive. If you only have one hive, that is more expensive than the Flow hive!
So with the Flow system, you don’t have to get the bees out of the Flow super (but I probably will, I am a creature of habit), you don’t have to carry the super away from the hive, you don’t destroy any comb (but you don’t get any wax either), you probably won’t need any strainers (there are so few wax particles, they probably won’t be noticeable), and you can carry the honey away in 6lb jars one at a time if you want - you don’t have to carry a 50-70lb super for extraction.
Overall, I find that article misleading, although I am sure that the author is well-intentioned. Time will tell, but actually Stu and Cedar have developed a revolutionary new way for harvesting liquid honey. The rest of the beekeeping is totally traditional, and requires discipline, empathy for the bees and conscientiousness.
Please let us know if you have other concerns. We all love bees, and we are not about doing them a disservice.
Dawn