The cake rack is a good idea Jack. I will look at that for my extractor. A gentle spin to start with has saved me a lot of hassles but new comb is still a bit fragile.
I did my first flow hive extraction today with no issues and no filtering of the honey needed but it sure makes extracting the honey boring, maybe with practice I can take frames from my traditional hives at the same time so I will be doing something.
Cheers
Thatās the type of boring I love Peter! I usually harvest flow frames over a whole day- in increments- and I set a timer and just garden or do other things while the harvesting gets done.
This year however Iām going to have flow hives at remote sites- and Iāll have to figure out what to do to kill time whilst harvesting. One site is an organic orchard, by a national park- with a dog, blackberries and a swimming pool- so that should be easy and very relaxing 
Spinning is fun- but when youāre only doing a few frames itās a bit of work and clean up. Most Iāve ever done at once so far is 8. I think Iād enjoy more doing 40 and getting some serious honey with roughly the same clean up. If things go according to plan Iāll live the dream this season
Hurray! How gratifying was that? I loved doing my first honey on tap! 
@Faroe Thanks Martha, I spent the time just watching and I was impressed as to how it went. I must also admit I was waiting for the flooding but it didnāt happen, I opened each frame in 20% increments and made sure the tube was never full of honey as it came out. There was no interest from any bees at the back of the hive so the whole process is less stressful for the colony.
From what I learnt today I am very pleased and next time I am draining a Flow Hive I will also be taking conventional frames out of hives for extracting at home.
Iām glad I bought 2 Flow Supers as an experiment.
I just bought a 3rd hive from the sale of my honey. whoop! How caw one tell when a dearth is over?
Is it a Flow Hive you bought or a Langstroth? One thing I miss with the Flow Hive is that there is no wax to reclaim, but I guess that is a small price to pay for the convenience of a Flow Hive.
As for when is a dearth over when I had hives before I was chasing the predictable honey flows up to a 250 mile round trip each day.
Here in Queensland on the Sun Shine Coast there is no such thing as a dearth even in what we call our winter. There is always something for the bees to forage on.
I guess I would look for pollen coming in which is often a sign of nectar also. If a hive is calm that can be a good indicator as well.
Cheers
I bought a complete flow 2 system which I assumed is a Langstroth based hive.
You have got it right, the 7 frame flow hive fits straight onto a 10 frame Langstroth box and the 6 frame Flow hive fit an 8 frame Langstroth box.
It has gone 1230am here, enjoyed the chat but I have to get to bed, hives again tomorrow making up a few base boards so I can make more splits.
Cheers
Hey Martha, thatās pretty cool! Do you mind sharing how much you charge for your honey?
Same with crystallized honey. Donāt be tempted to spin it faster to try to get it out. Doesnāt work, it just demolishes the comb! 
No, of course I havenāt tried anything that silly. Not ever!! 
So what is to be done with a frame or crystallized honey? All I can think of is to feed it back to the bees into the brood box.
I recently extracted 25 litres(about 5 gallons) of honey that creamed over night to be very smooth, is there a way of changing it back into honey? I have heated it in a microwave till it is clear honey and put it into jars but it has creamed again.
Cheers
Weāve used a heated plant starting mat with some heavy towels over the honey container(s) to re-liquify the honey.
But not using comb, I would guess. I just give crystallized honey in combs back to the bees. If they are hungry (winter or dearth) they will eat it, just like they eat granulated sugar or fondant.
Right, Pete said heād extracted the honey first.
Hi Peter, the best way is to use a warming tank or a warming cabinet. Iām using a warming tank, which is like a double boiler. I hold the water at just under 50C overnight. The next morning the buckets of honey are liquid again. I found that sometimes this time of year, honey can crystallize rapidly. I warned a customer of that last night. It must be what theyāre currently bringing in. I still have honey from Feb.-March that is still liquid, however I suspect the honey Iām harvesting now will rapidly crystallize.
Itās been hard work spinning this thick honey in this cold weather. I feel a bit like a zombie today. I keep reminding myself that the bees donāt feel like zombies. Theyāre still hard at it. I returned the stickies yesterday. Wilma got the dining room all spick & span yesterday & it looks like Iāll be bringing more full frames of honey home starting this afternoon.
I guess with a really candied frame you could sacrifice the comb and crush and strain it? You might have to warm it up in a bucket after you have cut it out of the comb and before straining. I havnāt had an candy in the hive yet- I had some honey in flow frames that had partially crystalized but it still flowed out when I cracked the frames.
It wouldnāt strain, believe me. If you are willing to go the mead route, you might be able to melt the wax and use the honey, but you would still need water to separate them, and judging how much redissolved honey to use in your recipe might be very tricky. I would just let the bees have it, unless you are tropical.
Hey Jeff, I did my first flow frames yesterday, it was interesting and went well with no spillage but I can understand how it can happen now. I opened 20% of a frame at a time and initially thought there was no honey coming to the tube but after about 30 seconds the flow began. Had to remind myself that honey does not flow as quickly as water
The flow frames were all capped inside of 6 weeks of fitting the flow super. Overall time taken to extract the 6 frames was about the same amount of time I take to remove a box of conventional frames, take them home and extract them. Next time I do Flow Frames I will be more confident and take frames from the other hives while the Flow Frames are draining, this time I just watched it happening.
Cheers
Well done Peter, remember that itās cold & the honey is thick. It might be totally different in another 6 weeks.
The honey looked a lot thinner in those photos that @Heron posted about his flooding issues. Mine might be ready to harvest by then or a bit later, so weāll see how it goes.
Crystallised honey is easy to deal with.
Scrape capping and spray a good amount of water over it. Put one frame in the middle of the brood nest. Bees will clean it up and the queen will lay it up.
If itās the wrong time of year to be doing that then uncap the honey and soak the frame in water overnight. Most of the honey will be gone and you can rinse the rest out with a shower head.
If you want to keep the honey then you will have to crush and strain then melt the wax.
We get a lot if crystallised combs here if the canola honey isnāt off pretty quickly in the spring.