Hurricane Harvey took my Honey Flow

My kids are devastated to lose their bees and their honey business. They are more sad about losing their bees than our house being flooded. Priorities. It had just started to become active in there. We returned to our house today via boat to assess damages. I found pieces floating in the water and a snake in the box. Exciting. Do you think this stuff can be reused?
Thanks, Kristen

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Very sorry for your loss. The situation is tragic, and we are thinking of everyone in your area who is suffering.

I don’t see why not. Personally, I would wash everything down thoroughly with a pressure washer to get the mud and debris off. Then I would apply 10% household chlorine bleach in clean water to all hive and frame parts to kill off any untreated sewage overflow. Leave 24 hours in the sun, rinse off well with clean water, and start over. You may need to wait until next year to start over, but you can do it.

Bees live in rotting trees, and drink water from cattle run-off pools. They can survive in much less clean conditions than we prefer. I am not suggesting that you adopt bee standards, but you don’t have to burn everything. :blush:

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If the mud has penetrated deep into the insides of the flow frames, you can disassemble them, clean them and reassemble them.

I really feel for what you and Texas are going through as I lost everything in last years flood in Louisiana. I found my boxes still full of bees and restacked them but lost the bees in a few days. I pulled the frames, cleaned the boxes with a hose and tapped most of the crude from the frames. The hives got robbed after I restacked them so there wasn’t much left on the frames to clean. I purchased 2, 10 frame hives from a local bee keeper and left them in the boxes to over winter. Both hives made it fine and in the spring I transferred the frames to my flow hive boxes. I harvested around 6 gallons this year. I wish you all the best in your journey to rebuild and as hard as it will be try to stay positive. It took us 51 weeks to get back into our house, a very long hard, frustrating journey, but we are back, better then before. Our thoughts and prayers will be with y’all.

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