Hello FlowHive Community,from Eastern CT. My name is Ray and I’m as green as can bee 
when it comes to bee’s. This is my families first venture in bee keeping. We have been reading up as much as we can so we can succeed at this. Although we are excited as we are nervous we can’t wait to produce some honey. We ended up purchasing the full kit to make it easier for us to get things going. So wish us luck as I am sure we will be asking tons of questions and excepting all the advice we can receive.
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Hi Jake and All Flow Hivers!
My name is Dawn and I live in San Diego, California. My husband (David) and I have around 30 years of beekeeping experience, mostly in the UK in WBC hives. We are getting to the point where lifting 50lb supers of honey is a pain (literally), and believe that a Flow Hive will assist us considerably in reducing our intake of painkillers! We are perhaps unusual in this community, in that David doesn’t really like honey and I have fructose intolerance, which limits how much honey I can eat. However, we are both fascinated by bees, and love watching them at work. Their social behavior is amazing and we can learn a lot from their unselfish commitment to their community. We also love the fact that they are very adept at communicating abstract concepts within the hive - what direction, how far and how much nectar. Incredible! They even collaborate when swarming, both on the decision to swarm and where to house the new swarm. We would really like to learn more about this aspect of bee behavior, meanwhile pollinating all of the citrus, lavender, rosemary and avocados in our neighborhood. 
Look forward to meeting more Flow hive owners and wannebees.
Dawn (and David)
Dawn, have a look at The Buzz about Bees by Jürgen Tautz and Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley.
Seeley has a wonderful description of how scouts on a clustered swarm recruit others to their choice of new home. I remember, last year watching the activity outside a bait hive. I noticed a few bees, then a few more, then lots more. Suddenly there wasn’t a single bee to be seen anywhere. Two minutes later I heard a swarm fly over, the bees congregated loosely in an overhanging tree then gradually went into the bait hive. 10 minutes later they were out foraging.
That sudden silence was when the last scout had been recruited and they went back to get the swarm which must have been hanging somewhere nearby…Wonderful.
Thanks Dee. My husband first got involved because of Karl von Frisch’s book “The Dancing Bees”, although an exact translation of his title would probably be “On the Life of the Bees”:
David is fascinated by communities of organisms which can form a so-called superorganism. The concept he has in mind is summarized quite nicely here:
He believes that humans are a form of superorganism, in that we have our own community of cells, but we also depend on bacteria and fungi to help our skin immunity, gut absorption, make vitamins etc. Without them, we couldn’t function in the wild. Indeed, you could argue that the mitochondria within our cells, which provide us with energy conversion, are an ancient bacterium that we all willingly carry and cooperate with.
Anyhow, back to bees. We will look at your book recommendations, thank you.
Now there is a fascinating thing.
Passed on to offspring by the mother only so inheritance is non-Mendelian.
Us females have our uses!
I have always wanted to try bee keeping, hoping that the Flow Hive makes this an easy task. Can’t wait to receive it!
@lwhitmore65 You still need to learn bee keeping skills.
Have a look around here and ask questions on the various topics - useful to have a read first and see what there is here
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Valli is right. Looking round here is a good start. Join a bee club and learn how to keep your bees healthy and how to handle them. Remember, the flow frames are a method of extracting your honey. You still have to have healthy happy bees to produce it and that means looking after them.
Hi All
I’m Jane from the Central Coast of NSW, Australia. So excited that my hive has just arrived from the USA. Packed beautifully. Now to coat with tung oil. Still waiting for frames from Brisbane. Have 2 hives in my first year of beekeeping.
Enjoying the learning (not the odd sting, though) and watching the girls being so industrious. So looking forward to using the inspection panel to spy on them as well.
Welcome aboard. Glad to have you on the forums. That is very exciting to have your boxes!
The apiary is jointly managed by the VAA Melbourne beekeepers’ club and Collingwood Children’s Farm. Its aim is to educate the public about bees and beekeeping, as well as providing beekeeping advice and practice to current and prospective beekeepers. On 6th December 2015 we installed a box of Flow Frames in one of our hives and will be documenting its progress at www.facebook.com/collingwood.bees/ We would be interested in exchanging information about the use of Flow Frames with other beekeepers, particularly those in the Melbourne (Australia) area.
Hi Everyone,
My name is Sheldon. We have 180 hectares of land full of Blue Gum trees (eucalyptus) attached to a missionary farm that was originally planted for the sole purpose of beekeeping.
We are finally getting around to starting a beekeeping project on the land and I’m really excited to start learning about these wonderful creatures.
I will be trying to educate myself over the following months, before we launch this project, so expect lots of questions…
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Nice to meet you, Sheldon. There are a lot of Australians in this forum, so you will find some local advice, as well as bee knowledge from all over the world. The more questions you ask, the better. Please remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question - we are all here for the love of bees, and we want to help if we can.
@CCFapiary Can anyone come and visit - My Nephew is up the road and have a Sister with family in Coburg.
I notice you have a oblong Top Bar Hive - do you have a patten for it - someone yesterday was looking for help to build one
@Dawn_SD I think you will find @Flanjet is in South Africa - although I’m curious as to why there are a bunch of Blue Gums in SA? Please enlighten us
You correct Valli, I’m in South Africa. The farm is in Mpumalanga, which is on the highveld, in the northeast part of the country.
The two main Australian blue gum trees we have here, are the Saligna and the Red River Gum.
They were brought here by the British at the end of the 18th century to dry up the marshes to fight malaria.
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Sorry about that, Sheldon! Well, there are quite a few South Africans on the forum too, although I think many are in Cape Town rather than your neck of the woods.
I spent 3 months in South Africa over 25 years ago (during the infamous taxi wars, before Nelson Mandela’s release). Beautiful country, lovely people. I worked in trauma at Baragwanath hospital in Soweto. It was great experience and really eye-opening. The patients made UK and US patients look like total wusses - 2 days after open chest surgery, they would discharge themselves, and walk out of the hospital unaided. Amazing! Managed to visit Durban, Port Elizabeth, the Garden Route and Cape Town briefly. We would love to go back some time, but I would love to hear about beekeeping in your part of the world.
Dawn
I loved that too and even managed a walk up Table Mountain.
Daughter and I spent New Year touring vineyards but the best part was Christmas hiking in the Drakensbergs.
My family and I are still currently in Port Elizabeth, on our way up to Mpumalanga in Feb to start our new adventure!