I received the final parts of my Flow Hive order last week so have built the full set - base / brood box / honey super / roof.
I’ve got a few questions, never having done this before.
Should I paint my cedar Flow Hive? I’ve seen varying recommendations online from using oil primer/exterior house paint to just oiling the boxes with Tung Oil. What should I do to best protect the boxes against rot, termites, mold, etc?
Should I put wax in my langstroth frames? If not, do I put anything in the frames at all as a guide? Totally unsure about this.
I am receiving a 3lb box of bees + queen in 3 weeks. No frames - just bees. It’s my understanding that you spray them with sugar water, place the queen box in the brood box somehow (kind of vague on details), and dump the bees into the hive?
Any tips you all could give would be most appreciated.
Check with your local - Minnesota - Groups? See if there are any courses and locals you can call on for help and advise when you get your bees about how they transfer and local conditions.
Try to read posts on here and see the types of questions you need to answer - there will be lots of questions so ask away
Hi there and welcome! The manufacturer of the wood part of the hives is Bee Thinking, here in the US. They recommend sealing the wood with pure Tung Oil - don’t use Minwax or stuff you find in Home Depot, it will like have undesirable solvents in it. You can buy the Tung Oil from Bee Thinking, or even cheaper from Amazon.com. Tung oil is not like other sealing oils, it actually reacts with oxygen in the air to set to a hard coating - it doesn’t stay wet. Do it soon, because it takes about 2 weeks to “cure”. Western red cedar is very rot resistant and termites don’t like it either. You actually don’t need to treat it all, but sealing it enhances and preserves the color.
Flow has made a very nice little set of videos with Michael Bush, showing you what to do and why. It should take a lot of the uncertainty/anxiety out of the process for you:
I wasn’t aware that US beekeepers do double deep brood boxes. After asking a couple of friends about this, I confirmed that folks in my area do do just that. So, thanks for the link to the store for getting another brood box!
You are very welcome. If you have cause to need it, their customer service is awesome - they really do care. By the way @Eurydc, very clever name… I hope Orpheus rescues you soon!
Haha, thanks! Eurydice & Orpheus are actually my World of Warcraft characters. I tried years ago to get Eurydice on Twitter but couldn’t, so came up with Eurydc as a clever phonetic substitute.
Oh that’s great! I’m on Azjol-Nerub and I’ve got 100s of my warlock (Eurydice), paladin (Orpheus), hunter, priest, shaman and death knight. My rogue is 91 headed for 100 and I hope to pop my Druid up from 85-100 before the next expansion. Yay fellow WoW player!
