Hi guys, looking for some advice again please… I’m from Melbourne Australia and about to go on a two month honeymoon… my first brood box is almost full and I’m just about to add the flow frames before I go and hoping they will be full by the time I’m back…
Just wanted to see if anyone has advice on my climate, if I’ll need a second brood box before I put my flow frames on…? Or if I leave my flow frames full and just take off the queen excluder over winter, will that be enough honey for them to survive…?
Or if I add the flow frames and then later decide that I might need to add a second brood box… is that possible when the flow frames are already on…?
Put your super on and find a local beek to check on your hive while you’re gone. 2months is a long time to leave them unchecked coming into spring and summer…even in Melbourne’s weather
First … Congrats ! … I’m from up North near Seattle … Not sure about the two month during this active season without someone bee sitting ! Does your area run double deep boxes there. Being gone that long I’d add just a deep …and have someone you trust check-in … Never hurts to have an extra super of honey … Then they can add the QE n Flow-hive if your honey super gets stuff. Otherwise you’d have to have someone try to try n harvest your first honey harvest n you’d miss out on this first ! That’s just my take on one thot !
Now enjoy the time, your honeymoon n let the bees be bees…
Thanks heaps everyone. I think I’ve made my decision… but still open for suggestions…
I’m going to add my flow super this week, as I figure it’s best not to add new brood frames without suerpvision, just incase they bugger them Up and I won’t be there to fix them… hopefully they won’t swarm in that time I’m away… and when I get back… if I need to… I’ll add another brood box then… or just hope I won’t need to add one this season, just so I can add it next season to prevent them from swarming…
Hoping everyone can give me some advice, if that’s not the best thing to do… ?
I’m with Gerald. Add a deep and if someone could check in on them that’d be great.
Now forget about the bees and I wish you and the lady a very relaxing honeymoon!
I have once added a brood box and gone away for 6 weeks, but…
I added the box underneath the almost full box, and each frame in the second box had foundation of some sort (no foundationless frames). Nothing bad happened except for some bridge comb on the hive walls - it didn’t create much disturbance to clear that up. I would never choose to do that, and I would never recommend it, but if you think your bees may run out of space or swarm, adding a brood box underneath the existing one is a good option.
G’day Paul, congratulations on the upcoming honeymoon.
I did a bit of thinking. A strategy you could adopt would be to open the brood up in the bottom box. Remove 4 frames & replace them with frames with fresh foundation in a checkerboard fashion. Put those 4 frames in the center of a second brood box flanked by 2 frames with fresh foundation on either side. Then put your QX on followed by the flow super. I think a strategy, something like that should keep the bees busy & not swarm for the next 2 months. You probably could keep the 4 frames of brood together in the bottom box as well.
I’m in the very early stages of setting up a flow hive at a school (still in research phase). We’re in the western suburbs of Melbourne. I was wondering how many brood boxes people have here? Do additional brood boxes easily fit on to the Flow Hive 2?
The outside and inside dimension of all the flow hives match to a Langstroth box, a flow hive 6 matches an 8 frame langstroth and flow hive7 is a langstroth 10.
I will leave it to those closer to you to advise about the best brood box set up in your area and particular climate but generally if you winter temps drop below 5c at night that justifies a second brood box if the colony is strong, if it is a new(1st year hive) then possibly the hive does not have the numbers to keep a 2 brood box colony warm enough.
Welcome to the forum.
Regards
Thanks for your help, Peter. As the students are putting bits and pieces together I’ll get them to make a second one and we’ll see whether we use it or not.
There is much you can do with two hives rather than one, for example if one hive is weakened in bees you can transfer frames of brood from the strong hive. You can also do re-queening of a hive if the queen has failed for some reason, and of course you can compare the production of honey. Re-queening sounds daunting but there is a well trodden path to do it with confidence.
Cheers.
Anyone in here that lives in the area of San Antonio?
I have one brood box that is practically full, i placed the flow super on top with the queen excluder on the brood box. Many bees are in the super as of now but I’m not seeing anything stored in it for the last week and a half.
I’ve ordered another brood box to help out with the number of bees that will help produce honey. Is this a good idea or would it be better just to get another flow super and let one brood box take care of two supers?
My thoughts were to produce twice as many bees with one queen so it would stress out the colony less…what do you think? Or would that stress out the queen more???
Hi Darren and welcome to the forum. Heaps of reading here and some great bee keeper happy to pass on advice.
A common mistake is adding the Flow Super too early, I wouldn’t add it till at least 80% of the cells of all the frames are being used for brood, honey or pollen.
Another mistake is expecting honey too soon. The bees need to seal up the gaps in the cells before they can store any honey there.
There is arguments for and against a second brood box and a lot depends on your climate. I would find out what local bee keepers are doing in that regard and it doesn’t make a difference if the locals have Flow Hives or conventional Langstroth’s.
Where I lived and had bees before the cold Winters a second brood box was needed for the colony to stay warm, now I’m in a sub-tropical climate I have single brood hives and a single super.
My advice is to let your climate dictate how you configure you hive and if you want more honey than the hive can produce then set up another complete hive. the colony dictates the amount of eggs the queen lays and that depends on the climate at the time and the availability of pollen and nectar.
Cheers
Hello and welcome to the Flow forum. I can try to help a bit with Flow and bee advice, but if you want local knowledge, you can use the magnifying glass search tool at the upper right. I put San Antonio in as a search term, and found about 10 previous threads.
There is quite a bit of work for the bees to do, waxing the super before they can store honey in it. If you pull a Flow frame out, you should see that they are filling the gaps between the cells with wax - that is a good sign. If you wanted to speed things up, you could smear some burr comb onto the plastic frames when you put the super on top of the hive. Probably a bit late now though, as the bees seem to have got the message.
One brood box or two? As @Peter48 says, the answer will depend on how long your seasonal nectar dearths are. Here in southern California, we have very long nectar dearths, so I use 2 brood boxes to make sure that the bees have enough stored food to last them. Your local bee club should be able to help with advice on that, if you can’t get an answer here. The disadvantage of 2 brood boxes is that it is more work to inspect properly, more heavy lifting, and if the hive ever gets aggressive, you will have a LOT of bees to deal with!
Two supers? You shouldn’t need 2 Flow supers. You can just drain any frame that is full as soon as it fills up. That creates more space for the bees to store honey, so they really don’t need a second super. The only exception to that is during a heavy flow of “wet” nectar. In that case, the bees have to dehydrate it before they can cap it, and putting an extra medium traditional super on top of the Flow super can help by giving them more space for fanning and dehumidification. I wouldn’t do it at this point though - wait for the Flow super to fill up first.
Hope that helps, and i hope you can get some local input on the recommended number of brood boxes.
So with two brood boxes, the colony actually gets bigger in bee numbers too (twice as much?) not just giving them more space for honey, is that right?
And with more bees, more honey comes in? I always feared that with two brood boxes you will only harvest the surplus that goes in the top super, and miss out on harvesting more honey.
And how big can a colony get? In theory, can you have three brood boxes? Four? I guess the limit is queen’s ability to lay enough eggs.
It depends on the bees, the queen and your pollen/nectar flow, so I can’t answer precisely. It will be a bigger number of bees than a single brood box, but usually not twice as big. However, if they get aggressive, it will feel 10x as big. Believe me, I have been there, done that, and got the t-shirt! I still keep doing it though, because it is best for the bees in my climate.
Thanks Dawn. I find that smaller colonies are calmer. So is it more likely for a double brood box hive to turn aggressive than a single brood one, taking advantage of their numbers?
A double brood box can have a bigger brood area so more bees. The colony decides on how big the brood can be, in colder weather of a dearth of nectar or pollen the queen is reduced in laying eggs and the colony reduces in bee strength. A queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day under ideal conditions and empty cells available so there is a limit to the brood and I have never seen a hive with more than two brood boxes. The more foraging bees a hive has the more nectar can be brought to the hive if there is enough in the area. If I wanted more honey production I increase the number of hives and not increase the size of a hive.
Cheers
… I’m from up North near Seattle … Not sure about the two month during this active season without someone bee sitting ! Does your area run double deep boxes there. Being gone that long I’d add just a deep …and have someone you trust check-in … Never hurts to have an extra super of honey … Then they can add the QE n Flow-hive if your honey super gets stuff. Otherwise you’d have to have someone try to try n harvest your first honey harvest n you’d miss out on this first ! That’s just my take on one thot !
