How to encourage bees to use the Flow Frames

I have 3 flow hives and they took virtually a year before the bees moved in.
Spraying with sugar water is a good way to get them in there.
If you scrape some wax off their brood box drop it into the super.

As for experienced beekeepers.
They all seem to rubbish the product.
“What the farmer don’t know, he don’t eat”

They all quote the plastic being bad, but they all use plastic foundation frames??

Its so easy to knock someone.
My flow frames are all well frequented now but they do take time.
Do read up on harvesting techniques on the forum.

DO NOT put the lever in all the way and take honey out. Do it in 1/4 depth at a time.

Happy beekeeping

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Bees don’t like plastic, and yet most of the foundation being made in the world is plastic. So despite that bees prefer other things (like their own comb with no foundation) they DO use plastic when that’s all that is available. I’ve had no issues with them using the Flow frames when there is a flow and they are out of room to build other comb.

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I am not surprised about the comments from the old beekeepers. They are set in their ways and that is fine. They can absolutely pull their frames and put them in the extractor. The flow frames are nice in that regard. Much less hassle during the harvest. I suppose like most things it will take time for some people to change their minds but I am sure that some never will. As for plastic I have both frames with plastic comb and foundation less and the bees don’t seem to have issue with either. I think its all in the preparation.

I put a coating of wax on the frames before I placed it on my hive last summer. The bees were on the frames immediately and started to seal up the frames. A month later I was able to harvest close to three gallons.

Coat them with wax and give them time. They absolutely work. As for the old beekeepers you could tell them they could go back to wiping their backsides with leaves instead of toilet paper if they are that much against progress!

Take care,

John

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That is so true but “old beekeepers”, of which there are a few on the forum, have other wisdom

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@Dee, I suppose I should have stated old school (ie, pull frames, remove wax, use extractor to get honey) instead of old beekeepers. Definitely didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelers.

I’m not at all offended.

I do all that
I love getting myself into surgical scrubs and locking myself into the sun room, music on, family shut out and that wonderful smell of honey wax and propolis filling the air
I know a little about how bees work and try to impart that knowledge to people who don’t.
I don’t care how folk get their honey as long as they don’t kill bees in the process

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Gazzas, I think the upshot of the above discussion is that they will use the plastic in the flow frames (as Michael Bush says above) in the circumstances he describes. If your hive is not using them then the circumstances are probably not right, rather than anything different about your bees or about your flow frames. Stick with it and eventually the stars will line up and you’ll see a stack of honey in there.
With my hives I use both my home made extractor and the flow frames and think I get the best of both worlds- the smell and nostalgia of the spinning frames and the feeling of wonder and amazement of seeing the pure honey flowing out of the flow frames into the jar.

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Gidday Fixit

Many thanks for your encouraging comments. I am almost sure I am just being too impatient after reading the many helpful comments here.
By the way, Fixit, what part of Oz are you???

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The girls started working the flows in early March. Yesterday we had a warm spring day and the morning activity was crazy. The air was thick with cleansing and orientation flights. In the afternoon I checked on the flows and found that in the 30 days since I noted the presence of some uncapped honey they have capped large areas and are well on the way to over 50% capacity.

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I’m having a tough go of it so far this year with my colony in the Flow Hive. I added the Flow super back on the hive a few weeks ago, the girls immediately sealed things back up and they were ready for nectar but then I had to sequester the queen in a mini split as they girls had made some swarm cells. I don’t have any evidence of a laying queen yet and the girls have almost completely backfilled the 2 brood chambers. I may have to get creative and remove one of the brood chambers or maybe move it to on top of the Flow super. The girls are ignoring the Flow frames because of all the available space down in the brood area.

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Hi again,

I’m on the north side of Brisbane

Fixit (Lyall)

Anyone know about this? I have a brood super, and a honey super for the winter months, both are over 80% full so added my Flow super about five weeks ago (early spring) but bees do not seem to be using or exploring. This might be due to the priority of foraging or some other factor…just wait>? How does one encourage them to START filling these up…or just be patient> ? Thank you.

Some have opined that melting some beeswax and using a paint roller to spread the melted wax over the flow frames will encourage bees to begin filling the Flow frames…

Thank you Michael. Appreciate the fast reply !

See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZdYGNEILyM

Bobbees is a member of this forum who has some GREAT videos – I recommend you subscribe!

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I agree with what @MichaelD said and @Bobby_Thanepohn’s video is excellent. However, I didn’t have enough wax available to paint the frames, so I did something simpler. During a hive inspection, I saved all of the burr comb that I tidied up from frame tops, sides etc, and used the hive tool to smear blobs of it over the surface of the frames. Sort of like buttering toast. Each face had about 8 or 9 blobs of wax.

Within 2 days, the bees were in the super working the frames. Within a week, nectar was visible in the middle frames. They removed my messy blobs with no problems. That was about 6 weeks ago. We hope to be able to harvest soon, when a frame gets fully capped.

Thank you very much Dawn…this is helpful and I will view the videos. Andy

When you say that 2 supers are 80% full, makes me wonder if the bees wont go into a third super until such times as the first 2 supers are 100% full. If your bees have a good size workforce & they are on a decent honey flow, that will happen fairly quick.

That has been my experience so far @JeffH

They seem to want to fill the second brood box completely full of honey before moving up to the flow frames. Then they are over crowded and have shrunk the brood nest to where they want to swarm.

Tomorrow I need to insoect my hives and I am thinking about putting some honey supers over the flow hive and see if they will fill them quicker.

I just checked yesterday and these top 4 boxes are really heavy with honey. It won’t be capped for a couple of weeks. I did an artificial swarm on this hive plus grafted 10 queens. The honey flow this year is the best I’ve ever seen. Boxes should be filling up in the mid-atlantic/northeast.

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