Long Lang with Flow Frames

Follower board removed, last three foundationless frames added. Interestingly this created enough work that the bees moved off all the flow frames.

@Dawn_SD it certainly is a pumping hive but very placid and easy to work. Now all the normal frames are in (22ish I forgot to count) they should really get onto filling the flow frames fully. At this stage they were only 10-20% nectar/honey.

Adam

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Adam,
Iā€™m keen to make a long Lang for Spring, mainly to save the aching back. How did your long Lang go for the rest of the season and now In the cooler season?
Mike

It was a bad year for everyone so Iā€™ll be interested to hear

@SnowflakeHoney is right it has been a very poor nectar season so that constrains an answer on honey production and use of the flow frames in my configuration in a long Lang.

Having said that as a hive to manage the two long Langā€™s are great. I have one with flow frames and one without. The colonies do a little better, are more pleasant to work with and the mechanics are easier.

I can not answer about swarm management as nether of the long Langā€™s looked to swarm this season, nor did my verticals. I donā€™t think they will be any more prone to swarming than any other hive type.

They built out frames a little faster and they are certainly more active than my verticals now.

Genetics seems to play as much as a factor in how they go. My swarm long Lang is doing significantly poorer than my commercial queen long Lang. The same good genetics in a vertical is doing about the same, maybe slightly better, than my swarm long Lang.

I like them to work and will be making another soon too.

Adam

Well this hive has bounced out of our mild winter and laid up 18 frames, 10% drones. It has put on 17kg in the last 30days, biggest single day was 1.7kg and there isnā€™t a major nectar source yet. They have been back in preparing the flow frames and I assume some nectar has been deposited in the first flow frame or two. Iā€™ll check in the next few days when the weather looks better.

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Adam, thank you for letting me know that flow frames do work in a Long Hive, that is encouraging. Iā€™m thinking I might build a Long Hive as I found there is great enjoyment in creating something that works. But I am intrigued about this post where you talk of the changing weights of your hive. Do you have the hive on a set of scales?
Laurence

Yes I have them on a set of WiFiScales

Not the best photo of the set up. But is a WiFi module with two load cells for the long hive. I have a 10w solar panel charging a 12a 12v battery that has a 12v USB converter that powers the unit. There normal set up is either AA batteries or a power pack. They do single cell and GSM modules as well.

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Wow. Didnā€™t know of such things. Have you got an ebay link I could look at them please?
Also I notice your long hive entrance is close to the wall. So bees donā€™t mind? I just imagined they like a clear flight path for take off and straight in approaches.

Not an eBay link but a website http://www.wifihivescale.com/

The bees donā€™t mind being close to walls at all. It helps me manage human bee interaction in my yard and pushes them above neighbours.

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I can vouch for the company, support, and scales. I bought a set myself recently :slight_smile:

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Thanks Adam, much appreciated. In setting this up with a long hive then, do you need to center all your frames within the hive to get an accurate weight? Or doesnā€™t it matter as you are only interested in the change in weight over time?

It doesnā€™t matter. A normal vertical hive they use one load cell to measure a half weight and then calculated to the full hive weight. I was concerned this would lead to inaccuracies on a long hive and have two load cells, one at each end. This means a different calculation for hive weight. This seems to give a very stable reading.

The WiFi original takes readings hourly, the rapid fire has adjustable increments and Iā€™ve currently got my one set to 5min increments. It has a 50g resolution and that is enough for me to see the hives activity (start of foraging, orientation flights, nectar gathering, evaporation of nectar, number of foragers, etc) and it gives me the change overtime. One of the keys is to remember there are 10 bees to 1g.

Adam

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Well the flow frames are filling up. The hive has put on ~30kg of weight over the last three months. They have preferentially filled up the normal frames prior to filling the flow.

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Well it is worth inspecting flow frames. I had held off as the rear most cells were not full. Well today three of the flow frames are fully capped except for those marging cells and the other three are 70% capped.

So confident in the concept of flow frames in the long. They will fill all six in my configuration. The other side had some brood on 18odd frames, 3 almost all honey but 70% capped too and the remaining 1 frame was full capped.

So took the full frame, it was foundationless, and did some cut comb. Then I harvested a few frames.

Just a sample of the harvest today.

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So Iā€™ve harvested 28kg of honey from the flow frames and taken 5 or so frames for cut comb. There is plenty of stores and the Marri is starting to flower, although may be low on nectar.

From a four frame nuc with 3 flow frames as a display hive Iā€™ve harvested 21kg. And from a 6 flow frame single brood box Iā€™ve harvested 28kg.

Iā€™ve enjoyed the long Lang so much Iā€™ve just started building a second one to take the flow frames from my normal Lang.

Just need to find some time to finish the roof, finish the small details, paint and move the bees. But at least Iā€™ve made a start.

This time it is all made from pine. 45mm sides, 30mm base and roof to come.

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Finished and in place now. Just need to stop procrastinating and organise to move the bees so I can transfer them into this.

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beautiful work Adam! I canā€™t wait to repopulate my own long hive- and get the next two up and running. Look forward to hearing more about yours. Now is the time of the beekeepers!

This last few days I did spot inspection on 8 hives- all very strong- and harvest maybe 20KGā€™s - and finally had some time to looking into my own long hive which sadly didnā€™t make it through last winter. I will be getting onto that situation ASAP- and getting it prepped for spring 2020. Seeing how your hive has done has been great for me- as mine is essentially an identical configuration. I lost that colony over winter when it went queen-less after having been moved up to the hills due to a landlord enforced sudden move. In the spring madness getting new bees in it got sadly left out- my bad. Not anymore.

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Put some bees in this morning.

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Hi Adam, I really like your long langs, a lot of thought went into making them. I can see a lot of advantages of using a Flow long lang for an ageing backyard beekeeper like me. Ease of maintenance being the most obvious one.

From your experience what are the disadvantages you encountered? Would you give up a standard Langstroth on only use a long lang?

I have effectively given up my verticals for honey/cut comb production. I only really want two production hives but flex up to 16 or so in Nucs and 8f singles.

The only disadvantage I can think of is the foot print, these are equivalent to 3 x 10f boxes side by side, just over 1.2m long.

All the advantages you hear of are real. If you make one/some think through hive entrance, cover boards, roof space and pest management.

This is my favourite LL overview and where most of my influences came from:

Adam

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