Excellent information. Thanks
Hello All, My flow hive is located in Sydney, Australia. I recently opened my flow hive to find approx. 4kgs of honeycomb located in the roof. Im concerned that the bees aren’t filing the flow hive cells efficiently. Is there something I can do to prevent the bees building comb in the roof? See photo
Thank you
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Great pic. I suggest stapling some flyscreen over the hole in your inner cover. Scrape your big burr combs into a nice clean bucket so you can get some value from your girls hard work. Shake off all the bees at the front of your hive before replacing your cover.
Some people have painted their Flow frames with wax/syrup/honey etc but I have found my girls will use the Flow frames without any preparation. Once they run out of space for building comb, they will start using the Flow frames.
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we covered the hole in our inner cover with a piece of wood. Did you remove all that comb from the roof? The good news is that will be some nice honey- and 4kg’s of honey should give you 125 grams of wax…
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Well Andrew thanks for the video. I must say that is the cleanest hive I’ve ever seen. The frames in mine are all glued together with propolis.
when i open the door onto the frames I have the occasional black ant wandering by, and the odd spider trying to set up home and propolis everwhere! You have very neat bees.
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Propolis is good! A neat hive, in human terms, doesn’t necessarily constitute a healthy hive
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I agree. all my bees make burr comb on the top bars. I leave it alone as they just replace it as soon as I’ve gone. Some of my bees are really sticky, some not. That’s down to their genes.
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in my long hive I had a real problem with the bees attaching the top bars by burr comb to the inner covers- so much so that the frames would lift up with the inner covers if I tried to remove them. The issue was perhaps worstened because my design has 4 inner covers and they are small. I put vinyl mats on all the top bars and now it is all perfect- no burr comb at all- and the mats cover those frames I am not working on reducing bee disturbance. I’m also hoping it may reduce cross comb at the tops of the frames. It actually mimics natural hives more too.
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here in australia its just the norm to put a sheet on Lino/vinyl on top of the frames - you just need to make sure you leave a gap around the outside for airflow… it also stops water dripping on the bees if you get a lot o water on the top lid doing winter…
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A better way to stop condensation dripping on the bees in winter is to make sure the top is colder than the sides of the hive
I’m with @Andrew, I like the vinyl mat idea. After seeing what the rest of the world does, I think the Aussie method, the combination of the vinyl mat - migratory lid has to be the winner.
The standard store purchased migratory lids need insulation in my view in Tasmania (and recommended by at least one vendor here). Any migratory lids I have that are not insulated get water condensing on them due to the dew point - with or without ventilation holes. To remedy this, I now insulate all my lids with a thick and sort of dense polystyrene (painted inside with ordinary exterior/interior acrylic paint, however large sheets from another manufacturer can be purchased with a building foil on the surface which would be good too). The bees do not chew what I have done. I also put a vinyl mat over the top of the frames to stop any building of comb up onto the lid.
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