I will be ordering my FH2 in the next few days, I’m from the UK (Yorkshire) typical winter temperatures below
Should I order a second brood box when I place me order to help over winter the bees?
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Hello Mark, on those figures you and the bees would certainly benefit from a second brood box in my opinion. You would need that for the colony to build up numbers to be able to keep the brood warm. You should also consider buying a Langstroth box, A Langstroth 8 frame box is the same size a the Flow Hive 6 frame super which is what I did. A standard base board, Langstroth 8 frame brood box, a metal queen excluder and a 6 frame Flow Super and a migratory lid(Flat topped lid).
You may also need to think about insulating the hive as well. House builders sarking wrapped around the hive a stapled to it with a piece of old carpet on the roof should help then keep warm over the Winter. Maybe @Dee can add her thoughts as she is in the UK.
Bbrrr that is cold, no wonder you guys drink warm beer 
Regards
While you are at it, just order a second flow brood box. I would. It’ll fit nicely with the flow 2, visually and dimensionally. If you don’t really need it, which I doubt, you’ll have a spare for the future.
If you ordered the full flow 2 set, you won’t need anything else for a start. It’s a complete package, without the bees.
Good luck on your bee journey!
You will get plenty of advice, the hardest is to sort out what is best for you.
Look forward to years of observing and learning from your bees.
What I didn’t expect is I’m learning more about everything the bees forage on. In the past I thought learning about all those Australian eucalyptus is too much, now I’m right into it.
As Peter said, our @Dee would be a great advisor for you. She’s pretty matter of fact.
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When I kept bees in the UK, we used “brood and a half” for overwintering. For a Langstroth, that would be one deep brood box, and one medium. The only problem with that is that you now have 2 different frame sizes to keep in stock. If you wanted to simplify, you could use double deeps for brood, or you could try with a single deep. The only risk of a single deep is that they may run out of food if you don’t monitor things and feed them. Double deeps build up population numbers faster in the Spring, but the downside of that is that you then have a lot of frames to inspect, and a big bee population can be quite a handful at the peak of the season, especially if they are bad-tempered.
So I guess the answer is, it is up to you. I bet most of your locals will be using brood and a half with your cold winters, but you could always ask at a local bee club. If you do what they do, you will be doing the best thing for your climate. 
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I ordered a second brood box with mine. It worked out great while growing my colony. It worked out paint wise too. No second clean up and a nice color match. 
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Just to add to the other comments here Mark…
I also went for a second brood box when placing the order for my FH 2.
Back when i used to keep bees, as with Dawn, i too used to work with a brood and a half.
We may well need a second brood box here in the UK and as @Webclan said it’ll be aesthetically pleasing and come to good use when you need it also.
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Thank you when I place the order this weekend I will add the extra brood box
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Hi Mark,
You may like to have a look on the UK Flow page to see if there is some info on brood boxes:
Or we a section “how many brood boxes” based on location.
@Paras has a few Flow Hives in the UK. Not sure if the climate is the same or how many brood boxes he uses.
Just in case you are not aware of our UK National Flow Super:
https://eu.honeyflow.com/collections/all-products/products/flow-super-uk-national-pine
This will fit on top of standard UK National brood boxes in the UK. This can be handy if you want to buy brood boxes, etc locally.
I am using 2 Brood boxes purely as I am keeping large colonies, my colonies expand to two brood box. One of the hives had 14 frames of Brood in April/May this year, so having 2 brood box this gives me plenty of time to do swarm control in May rather than in April.
It does not get to cold here, we did have the really cold March when we had the snow fall. After swarm control I may have one brood box to start with and just monitor their space. for brood laying.
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