How to encourage bees to use the Flow Frames

My set up, fry pan foil tray, borrowed wax, works like magic for me, bees took to frames instantly.

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I did this last year but first year bees ā€¦no honeyā€¦but they got busy and sealed all the gapsā€¦just put it back onā€¦weā€™ll see.

I think there are lots of good ideas here, but I am stubborn and wanted to see what it would take for the bees to do it on their own with no cajoling.

I established the hive in May 2016. They filled the original (foundationless) brood box by the end of July and cast a mini swarm, which I captured and reintroduced along with another brood box (also foundationless).

In October the two brood boxes were at 9 frames each and pretty full and I added the Flow Box, without and excluder.

In the middle of March 2017 they finally were ready to begin filling the Flowframes.

So, from hive establishment from a smallish swarm, in May 16, to action in the flows in March 17, 11 months later.

This is in San Francisco, which has a mild marine climate, and year round flows of some sort.

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Today was huge milestoneā€¦ I was able to get honey from 2 full flow frames.


They slowly started o use them after I lightly coated each face of each frame with wax recovered from burr comb from their hive. I used a small paint roller and rolled molten wax onto each face as I said above.

There has always been plenty of activity - just nothing to show for it.

Here is a shot of the frame half coated with the wax. You can see that the bees have been at work and ā€˜repairedā€™ the cells but they didnā€™t do anything after that. Obviously the top half of this shot is the waxed area.
And today ā€¦

There it isā€¦ a long time in the making but eventually successā€¦

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Hello from Atherton in FNQ.

I am new to beekeeping and chose to go with a flow hive, and went ahead and purchased a full set of flow frames and made up a complete hive. I am a retiree and my hobby is woodwork and I have made a number of conventional beehives for various people and a couple of flow hives.
I have a very good friend who has been beekeeping for over 45 years, and he commented to me that he did not think a flow hive was a good choice. I have since had similar comments form several well established old experienced beekeepers. Their comments were based on their experiences with using plastic in their hives, and they assured me bees do not like plastic.
I had a very experienced commercial beekeeper set the brood box up for me, and he delivered the very well populated brood box to me on 1 February. I left the brood box settle for a few days before adding the flow hive super. and then let the hive settle for about a further month. The bees were quite active during that period, and indeed have been quite active every day since then.
Under the guidance of my very well experienced friend, we looked into the brood at about 4/5 weeks, and he commented the brood was very strong and everything was very healthy and normal,
Following that inspection, I observed the hive super box via the inspection window on the rear end of the flow frames, and lifting the roof without disturbing the bees. I did this inspection on a weekly basis. Up until the 7th week, I noted that there were little to no bees in the super box even though there was still very large amounts of activity in general from the hive.
I placed a pollen trap at the entrance to the hive a left it for 3 days and gathered about a half cup of pollen in that time. I have not reset the pollen trap since then.
Up until week 7 there were little to no bees active around the flow frames, and then in the 8th week there was evidence of quite a lot of activity with bees evident in the super box around the flow frames. This activity has continued up to the present time, although it was impossible to see if there was any honey being deposited into the flow frames.
Today I chose to remove the lid and pull a few of the flow frames to see if any honey had been deposited.
To me great disappointment after removing and inspecting every flow frame, there is absolutely no evidence of any honey being deposited into the flow frames, Indeed there is little to no evidence of the flow frames even being sealed with wax.
I appreciate that I perhaps somewhat impatient in looking for a result, but my experience so far is quite negative to the Flow Hive concept.
I would love to hear from other Flow Hive users of their experience from the time they set their hives up, and whether they have had any positive results.

The bees will only move into the super when they need to, irrespective of flow or traditional frames. Based on how I read what you typed it is unlikely your colony was big enough to move into the super in the time frame you expected. This could have been for a number of different reasons.

Some people with flow frames experience slow take up on the flow frames and this is typically overcome in one of four ways:

  • splashing a small amount of sugar water on the flow frames
  • splashing a small amount of honey water on the flow frames (using honey/nectar from the hive and not any other source)
  • rubbing beeswax over the flow frame face
  • taking a capped frame (brood, brood+honey), minus the Queen, and swapping a flow frame out for a couple of weeks

    As for the plastic comment, whilst I use wax foundation on my traditional frames, based on my research and reading plastic foundation is common, especially amongst some commercial operators. If bees truly didnā€™t like plastic then plastic foundation probably wouldnā€™t exist. I think your friends comment is based more on their own views and/or experience rather than being a fact.

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    @Gazzasā€¦ As for own experienceā€¦

  • I got my Nuc in February
  • I spent autumn and 90% of winter with nothing more than the brood box
  • When the colony was bursting at the seems and the weather seemed to be warming up I put the flow super on
  • The bees took a few more weeks and then started to fill the gaps
  • To help speed the process up I swapped a flow frame out for a traditional frame with a mix of brood and honey
  • Late spring I put a hybrid super and a half deep on. I made frames consisting of a mix of wax foundation, foundationaless (only a starter strip), and partial wax foundation starter strip to test in the half deep. The hybrid and half deep were put on before the bees actually needed the space
  • The bees took to the hybrid setup perfectly. The half deep no issues. The full flow super was a bit patchy on some frames so I splashed honey water over them to even the filling
  • First season harvest was over 40kg. This being said it is not uncommon (I.e. It's very common) to harvest not much or even nothing in your first season while your colony builds up

    Hopefully that gives a broad idea of what I did and experienced, including time frames.

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    Thank you for your comments which will be of great assistance to this beginner.
    I note your comments in respect to the strength of the brood, but can confirm that the brood is absolutely bursting at the seams. I was very lucky in that the person who stocked my brood box for me is regarded as the master guru in the local beehive community, and he had the brood box for over 5 months during this process.
    Again, experienced beekeepers have checked the brood box since then and have commented on the strength of the brood.
    I note your location and also note (if I am interpreting correctly) that you started the process in Feb and again, if interpreting the timeline correctly, you harvested sometime much later in the year, which would have been say Sept/Oct. If my assumption is correct, I am obviously being very impatient expecting some honey activity in the flow frames after just 10 weeks.
    Thank you again and look forward to any further comments.

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    Hi,@Gazzas, I am a complete newBee, I put a nuc in my Flow Hive 16th October 2016, the bees built out the 4 empty frames very quickly, Boxing Day I removed the Korflute, it was 3 deep in dead bees, I assumed it was the hot days, left them alone till Feb '17, when I put the Flow frames on, the bees were not interested in them, a experienced club member suggested rolling the frames with wax, Instant change within 5 minutes the bees were into it, have harvested all 6 frames since,I have now removed the Flow Frames and packed the hive down for winter, donā€™t give up, most of the older beekeepers in my experience and just a tiny bit anti this new system.

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    Hey thanks Bruce.

    Know what you mean about the old beekeepers. I am yet to have one positive comment in regard the flow concept.

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    @Gazzas my first harvest was mid Novemberā€¦9months after I got my Nucā€¦

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    Gazzas - I didnā€™t put anything at all on my flow frames. The bees sealed them up to hold the nectar in a couple of weeks and then pretty much filled them up in a couple more. That was very late winter/early spring here in Tasmania and we were in a good flow. I think it may well be the quantity of the flow of nectar from the flowers that is probably the most important factor as much as how many bees are in the boxes below the flow frames or how active they are flying out of the hive.

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    Hiā€¦ I too was very disappointed as my bees did absolutely nothing (except walk all over them and do some preliminary ā€˜repairsā€™ to the splits in the cell walls.) My frames arrived approx 16 months ago but today I harvested my first honey from the two centre frames. Iā€™ve included below my post in another section - maybe it will help. BTWā€¦ watching the honey flow into the jar with no need to filter was greatā€¦ (of course the rest of the conditions in your hive have to be healthy as usual, plenty brood, good nectar flow, no disease, etc etcā€¦ ) I wish you all the best for the flow frames but you may need some patience for the hive to accept them, but once they do, ā€¦ Just thought you might like to hear from someone else who posted on this forum that they were very disappointedā€¦ me.

    http://forum.honeyflow.com/t/how-to-encourage-bees-to-use-the-flow-frames/5099/124?u=fixit

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    Hi @Gazzas, I have setup a number of new hives in Sydney over the last couple of months and have found that in the 90% of colonies, they have not moved up into the supers to draw out comb for surplus honey. I can only put this down to the strength of the colony and a lack of nectar in the area. I opened a box today that I had setup in february for a friend, the brood is strong across every frame, but nothing in the super. The bees are only bringing in enough to sustain their colony with no surplus. This is not related to the flow hive but standard hives as well, its happening across the country, so donā€™t feel disheartened.

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    My flow hive works great I waited till my brood box was very strong ( 8 months) before I added my flow hive and they filled it in 4 weeks approx 15 Lt of honey it was early summer . I harvested it again 4 weeks later and once more early Autum and then left them over winter
    I just inspect over winter I live in the lower blue mountains area near Penrith

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    Hi Ricky - as a matter of interest- what was the flow like? You had the same fill speed as me. I put my flow frames on as a response to the amount of honey being produced by the hive (I checked progress leading up to putting them on). It was during the period of a high flow. That to me was as important as how many bees were in the hive or how many bees were leaving to forage.

    I can only agree with what others have written: if the bees donā€™t have honey to spare- they wonā€™t fill supers regardless of if they are standard ones or flow ones. This year I started two colonies in spring with flow frames added when the brood had built up. One colony boomed and I have harvested around 30 kegs of honey from the flow frames. The other colony is a bit weak- and after months they have only half filled the flow frames.

    When your colony is ready it will fill the flow frames:

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    There was a high flow on great weather for a few months.this year has been slow compared to last year there is allways plenty of trees in flower in the lower mountains emu plains area all year but the weather has been so up and down Iā€™m thinking thatā€™s why itā€™s a slow flow at the moment

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    How do you place a pic

    When you click reply you should see an ā€˜uploadā€™ button at the bottom right. Click on it then choose your photo and upload itā€¦

    At least thatā€™s how it works on my mobile phone. Could look different on different devices. On a computer you can just drag and drop the photo into the text boxā€¦

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