Just to put what I observed into words and the forum.
Sitting at the back of a Flow Hive during extraction I saw the bees got involved in ripping down the capping as soon as the extraction of a frame was done. They took to the job like a cavalry charge. Since fitting the Flow Supers the yield from those hives is considerably greater than from the conventional hives in kg yield by 20%. The 12 conventional Langstroth hives I have vary a little in yield which I put down to the colony numbers possibly varying, having done splits on all of my hives from our mild late winter into the spring.
I have now done 3 full(6 frames) extractions for the Flow Hives to averaging 2+ of the 8 frame Langstroth hives since the 1st of August.
As Julius Sumner Miller used to say “why is this so?”
Are other bee keepers with Flow Hives and conventional Langstroth hives having similar experiences?
Regards
Hi Peter,
Have a question how many brood box is your set-up.
Don’t have a flow hive but harvested two of my five, 10 frame Langstroth this week and took 8 fully capped frames from each leaving two frames in each hive. Total harvest 39kg and this follows on from similar results from last year. Flow hive results on the Gold Coast would be of interest.
Paras, blessed with the great climate we have its pretty standard to only have one brood box in this neck of the woods (Queensland Australia).
In sub-tropical Queensland I run 8 frame hives with a single brood box but when I was living in a cooler climate double brood boxes were the go to have more bees to keep the hive temperature warmer. Cooler climate was winter nights to -7C and summer days to 42C with lots of fanning and bearding. Sub-tropical in Queensland is “Winter” cold nights to 9c but warm days to 20c and “summer” 23C to 38C.
Regards