Just thought that I’d add my two cents here. I am in my second year with flow frames. What I have noticed with mine is if you look at the end of the frames as they are filling the cells, pay particular attention to the way the honey lays in the cells. If the honey lays at a long slope it is usually high in moisture. What you want to see is the slope to be as close to vertical as possible, I don’t pull my flow frames out to see if they’re capped because I feel that it defeats the purpose of harvesting without disrupting the hive excessively. The bees will eventually fill the cells right out to the edge, and the face of the honey will be nearly vertical. Using that rule, my moisture content has always been well below 18%. Also, from the end,if you look closely you can see the capping about a quarter of the way in. You can see what I’m talking about in the picture you posted, where some of the cells are laying at about 30 to 45°. Just thought it was worth mentioning.
Rob
Hi Rob - very interesting. Have you ever used a torch to look in further/better? If you use a small torch pressed directly on the plastic between the frames and peer closely, you can see the bees crawling on and between the frames right up at the other end. Thing is the bees are quickly attracted to the light and block the view so if you do it first thing in the morning it works best.
How long did it take for your bees to dry the honey from the face being between 30 to 45 degrees to near vertical?
I usually have pretty good sunlight shining on that side of the hive, so seeing in there usually isn’t a problem. From my observations, the bees will usually never completely fill a cell with high moisture honey, most of the time it will only be about half full and they will top it off over the course of a few days. Sometimes they will be just moving finished honey to different locations within the hive. The honey flow at different times of the season will also affect how long it takes them to finish filling the cell. I made a crucial mistake recently while I was harvesting from the flow frames. I was trying to make a drain system that was sealed with the bucket, and I had two problems that caused about ten pounds of honey to spill out into the hive. First, I had trouble finding the proper sized fitting to connect to the drain tube, which is a non-standard size at 1 inch O.D. I ended up reducing the inside diameter of the drain which didn’t allow the honey to flow out fast enough, and where I ran the hoses into the bucket,through the lid,the hoses fit tight where they passed through, and I had the lid snapped on tight, it got airlocked and before I realized what happened, I had honey running through the brood chambers. Two days later I had dead bees all over the ground. Apparently the honey had suffocated a bunch of the capped brood and the workers pulled them out of the cells and tossed them out. Was not a good day.
Hi guys we always only crack a section of the frame at a time say a few inches and always watch the amount of honey in the tube. Best to keep the tube only partially full as any honey that backs up can come out of uncapped cells and into the hive. You can tell if it is going into the hive beacuse it ends up on the bottom core flute board. The bees will lick up any from there as long as it is in the top slot.
We are all on a fast learning curve.
Gary
HI Rob - Thanks. Shame about leakage. I have heard of others cautioning about this backflow issue so I am sure others will also sympathise.
I heard of flooded hives due to airlock from several people who just meant to do the job too well. There’s no reason to connect everything that tightly, you just want to prevent bees from getting in.
Know of a new beek with one Flow hive who built this airtight manifold to harvest all frames at the same time. That went very wrong.
I think if you do beekeeping as a hobby and just have a couple of flow hives, part of the beauty is to be able to harvest each frame separately, even at different times. Usually there are differences in flavour, colour and viscosity.
I even label my jars with the hive name and frame number and harvesting date and the clan keeps comparing and giving feedback.
I noticed the same as you @Rob_Baumann, the nectar settles diagonally in the cells initially and the bees will re digest and shift it. If the honey stays vertical in the cells it’s ready, even without capping. It may be an important observation when people aren’t sure if honey is ready for extraction when the flow stops suddenly and winter preps start in some regions.
If you want some tubing that fits, here is what I use:
I bought a 10 foot length and cut it into 2 foot pieces.
You can see it in action, if you want:
Sorry about your flooding. As @Gaz says, I open the frames in about 4 or 5 sections, making sure the tube never fills to the top at the hive end to avoid an airlock. But I guess you know that now. 
Thank you all for your input,
As with just about everything these days, there’s a lot of myths out there and this is a good place to clear things up. I have since corrected the error in my ways. I’ve noticed that people in these forums also talk about using queen excluders with their flow frames. I have never used an excluder, and frankly I see no need for one in a flow hive setup. I use two deep 10 frame hive bodies and put the flow frames right on top of that without an excluder. Unless someone else has had it happen, I don’t believe a queen will lay eggs in a flow cell unless she has absolutely no place else to lay. I believe the main reason is that the bare cells in the flow frames are too deep for her to lay an egg in. Even in my traditional hives, I have never had a queen lay eggs above the second hive body with no excluder installed. My feeling is that the excluders restrict the bees travels too much.
Rob
Awesome advice. Thank you.
Ok more questions. I just did my first harvest - IT IS AMAZING.
Golden syrup of awesomeness… I only did 3 flow frames as I ran out of jars.
I heard this amazing buzzing, looked at the front of the hive and there was some honey coming out the front of the hive. It wasn’t a ton but it was enough to be curious. I saw above this happened to a few people? What causes this? How can I stop it? Also is there anyway to stop the flow of honey once i take the pipe out? I closed it up but seemed to pour out a bit you can see in the pics.
God nectar…
And below is about 11 lbs of honey.
It is caused by back flow when the collection channel gets flooded, or by leakage from the frame face if you have a lot of uncapped cells.
If you look at your photo, you can see that the Flow tube is completely full. This can cause an airlock which results in honey flowing back into the hive. So my guess is that you opened the whole frame at once, or at least opened a lot of it quite quickly and ended up with honey flowing back into the hive. If you scroll up and look at the cover photo for my first video above, you will see the air gap at the top of my Flow tube. You really want to keep it at that level or below - open the frame in sections and don’t open another section until the level starts to drop. It takes longer, but you get more honey out of each frame, because it doesn’t leak back inside.
You should get about 6 or 7 lb per frame from fully capped frames. I got 27.25 lb from 4 frames. You may have lost quite a bit inside the hive. Hopefully the bees will recycle as much as possible. It is all a learning process. 
Congratulations on your harvest, and better luck with the rest of the frames! 
DANNNNGGGGGGGG… you are 100% correct. I just cranked the whole thing open at once. I didn’t think of cracking it in sections. Genius.
Thank you. Should i just leave them go and let them clean it up?
HAHAHAH I am a moron. You literally had all of the instructions in the video. if i had watched it like a good little boy before going out… sorry.
/hangs head in shame/
Probably the best thing for now. When you have more jars, you can try again. Just to help a little, each frame will give you a maximum of a little under 3 quarts, probably 2.5 quarts for your first harvest. I bought these 64oz jars from Amazon. Another pint and a half (20-24oz) or so drained from the frame after each large jar was full.
https://www.amazon.com/Ball-Wide-Mouth-Gallon-Bands/dp/B0041SWYFQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500572142&sr=8-1&keywords=64+mason
Don’t do that. You fessed up like a man, and now you can learn from it. So can the rest of us.
oh boy, i hope i am not drowning my bees in honey.
Thanks for all your help
HAHAHA thanks. I will make sure to never do that again. (the mess up not the fess up)
You have been lucky, or just your method works. However, I understand that @Frederick_J_Dunn may have had laying in the Flow super, and he is an experienced beekeeper. Lots of others on this forum have seen drone brood in the Flow frames too, if they didn’t use a queen excluder.
I understand that it is a matter of philosophy, and I totally accept that queen excluders are “unnatural”. Even so, I really don’t want the mess of cocoons in the plastic frames, especially when they can impede a Flow harvest and perhaps make more honey leak back into the hive. Cleaning out the cocoons is not trivial either. I am sticking with my queen excluder, even if it isn’t ideal for the bees.
Yah i have read too many times too about queens laying in the flow and making a giant mess…
10:20
I did exactly the same thing. Now I open up 1/4 of the frame at a time - it takes a bit longer, but leakage is minimal.
In the my second season I put another twist in the wires
Great video,
It makes me wonder what exactly is in your brood boxes that would cause the queen to go that far up the hive and lay eggs. I currently have a hive that just replaced a missing queen. During the three week absence of a queen the bees filled all of the brood frames with honey, which didn’t leave any place for the new queen to lay eggs. I’ll be watching that hive closely to see if they move the honey up to make room for her to lay, or if they move up and build new brood cells for her. I considered reversing the boxes, but there’s a substantial amount of honey in the upper box and some empty frames that are not drawn out yet. I just decided to let things happen as they do just to give me an idea as to what they do on their own. If I don’t like the outcome, I’ll have a different plan if the situation arises again. In your setup there, I would think that your queen couldn’t lay enough eggs to fill all the lower boxes with brood, plus move up to another box, unless something drove her up there. Is it possible that the lower brood boxes are full of honey?
Rob