Hi Ethan, if you keep the honey in the fridge, it will ferment slower. A good idea would be to put half in the freezer, while you’re using the other half. We have some watery honey in the freezer. I pour some into my jar in the fridge when it gets low. Yes, pour. I can actually pour honey from the freezer, however very viscous
cheers.
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It can be an all day event to drain a Flow Hive. I only drain 3 frames at a time, and all at once, after I visually check the frames are capped. I have plastic 1 inch plastic tube from the 3 drain tubes to a pail with a bee-proof lid with the tubes sealed into it.
I open each of the frames in 20% increments to avoid flooding and leave it all connected overnight so that in the morning the drain chamber is totally empty. The other 3 frames in the super are left till I need to extract them to give the bees more space to store honey.
Certainly ambient temperature will effect draining time of frames.
I can do some pics to explain how I extract my honey if that would help, but please only extract frames that are at least 80% capped so that you are extracting honey that will stay as honey.
Cheers
It seems that mine are slowly bringing in nectar, but a tonne of pollen like Peter says.
Perhaps this rain will ramp it up.
Hello Rob, This has been the worst year I have had for honey production in my 45+ years of bee keeping but I haven’t lost a hive, but I have been switching frames of honey to keep some of the hives going.
It has been a hard year Australia wide with the drought effecting everyone and so hot in some places that honey comb melted in the hives and killing all the bees.
My last rain was in March and although there is a lot of flowering in the bush there is almost no nectar. Things can only look up from here Rob. 
Cheers mate
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I feel better then, was worried it was something I was doing 
The 3 hives are doing well and all have half full supers now and don’t require any feeding as I was doing from autumn onwards.
They’ve all doubled the amount of stored honey in the supers, so something is giving them nectar down here.
Your going really well then mate, this week I have started artificial feeding ten of my weaker hives and that is something I have never done before. Talking to others up here and we are all rowing the same boat. The bees are bringing in heaps of pollen and there is lots of flowering as usual up here but there is no nectar to speak of in the flowers due to the lack of rain. Last rain here was in March and it was less than 50% of the previous March.
I saw on the news Sydney was getting some rain so it is looking better for you guys. I guess it is saying when getting some rain makes it into the news and out of the weather report, eh…
Cheers
Strange the variation we are experiencing Rob, given our hives are probably less than 5 km apart. Mine seems pretty much stagnant over the winter period. Brood box is looking full and plenty of bees, but also no action in the flow supers. Hopefully the 4 -5 inches of rain we had in the last 48 hrs will get things going on the nectar front.
Peter - how hot does the ambient temperature have to get to melt a hive? Probably time for me to move mine back into the shade of the solar panels - I moved it out over winter to help warm them up. Hope you get some rain soon too.
Bees was will begin to soften at over 32C which is lower than you would expect but I’m not sure what is meant by ‘soften’. Wax will melt from 62 to 66C. But I have experienced comb collapsing at about 45C when I had hives out at Mudgee in very hot Summer heatwaves. It wasn’t nice to see a hive where the comb turned to mush and fell out of the frames and full of dead bees.
Remember you will get a lot of radiated heat onto the hive in Summer with the hive on your roof so maybe put a thermometer with the hive so you will get valuable info as to what is happening.
My last rain was in March, and that was the last time I mowed my lawn too. Our warmest and driest Winter on record by a long way.
Cheers Ethan
Hi all,
I had my first real harvest on the weekend. About 23 kg all up. All 7 frames full. This has all happened since my last post in September where I drained the only 2 full frames that were full.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6CdghLgEA7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
I made a rookie error and opened up an entire frame all at once and created a flood. Hopefully I will remember that next time.
On another note, I need to move my hive and attempted to do it last night, but the bees wouldn’t go to bed! I checked them as late as 10pm and there were maybe 100 hanging out around the front door. I then got up at 5am today and they are still hanging around outside before sunrise. Any tips on how I can get them all inside so I can move the hive?
Also, they keep building between frames and between the queen excluder and boxes. It makes it pretty difficult to pull the hive apart without killing heaps of bees and even harder to put it back together unless I spend hours carving all the unauthorised construction off. It makes me reluctant to inspect the hive, but the longer I leave it, the worse it gets of course! The photo of the construction between the flow frames has all happened since Sunday!
Cheers,
Ethan
Hi Ethan, I move my hives all the time around the backyard, I use a spray bottle with cold water. Give them a few sprays and then a few more, wait 30 secs… any stragglers get a few more sprays and then I seal up the entrance with clean moist kitchen sponges.
Yep, this is normal for this time of the year, just make sure your frames are butted up hard against each other, minimal bee space between the frames is key to reducing cross comb but I am afraid that comb on and inbetween the queen excluder & boxes is part of the course. They use it as a ladder. One tip would be to use a good quality metal queen excluder, it won’t prevent the excess wax but it sure makes it easier to scrape off. Good Luck.
What your pics are showing Ethan is typically what you will find in a healthy hive. The longer the time between inspections the more bridging comb you will find.
Now you have had a flooding and know why you won’t open a complete frame all at once again so a lesson learnt there.
Moving the bees in Summer is going to be a lot more difficult than in Winter when the bees would all be happy to go indoors in the early evening. In Summer bearding is common and if you need to relocate the hive you will have some bee losses. Handling a hive at night close it up even if the move is a couple of steps as the bees will come out and crawl up your arms looking for somewhere to sting as they will be in defensive mode.
Cheers
Thanks, guys. Hive moved successfully. Only one sting incurred - an accident.
How long should I expect that honey to last before it starts to candy?
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There is to many factors for a time that honey will candy. Things like what the bees have been feeding on to produce the honey. I have had honey candy in a matter of a few weeks but also honey that didn’t candy in a couple of years. I have even had it candy while still in the frames. It is like how long is a piece of string Ethan, there is no way to answer you with any accuracy.
Cheers.