Perth (WA, AU) Flowhives and honey flow

Hey Jack and Greg, I assume you’re the jack and Greg up the road from us? I think I remember pip mentioned you were doing the flowhive thing. We’ve had ours going for 10 months and got plenty of honey with all of that marri blossum. We’re going to have a look inside today… not that I really know what we’re looking for!. Is there any reason we should consider av second brood box? Do you still just have the 1? Would love to catch up some time to see how you go about the whole flow hive thing, it’s all new to me. That’s assuming you’re the Jacky and Greg I think you are! Cheers, Nic and Heidi

Hi Nic

Definitely is us . We are going to get another Brood Box as we are going to add another colony when it’s ready. Our setup is Brood, hybrid which has honeycomb & then the super on top. We took the super off over winter as the colony shrinks. The main thing to be looking for is everything looking healthy & the colony increasing now. We have been away but will also be doing an inspection soon. How did your box look today? Have yours started to fill yet? Xx

Jacky

Hey guys,
Well I got 5 bites thru the suit and a fat face and partially closed eye from a bite an hour after when I raced out to the car for something and got head hunted when a bee made a “bee line” for my nose!! Man did I piss them off! My queen excluder was stuck to the super and then a frame was stuck to the excluder and super so by the time we realised this we had already upset them and they were well pissed off. We offered them a smoke they weren’t in the mood for a joint! We abandoned the mission and are happy to assume that the hive is thriving with lots of new nasty babies and the honey topping up already. Another learning curve today. Many bees died by unintentional squashing or attempts to sting me (so many stingers in my suit, some successful) and we had to spend most of the rest of the day prisoner in our own home. Even the dogs got stung!

One thing we did decide from today is we’ll stick to the 1 brood box for now as we don’t want to encourage that many more baby bees at this stage.

Anyway apart from the events of the day we are happy with our flow hive. We’ll harvest a couple more frames this week that they didn’t get to in winter as they’re loaded with pollen already and filling it up it seems. Will find a time to up with you to check out your setup at some stage, and check in with you in general.

Good to hear from you,

Nic and Heidi

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Definitely worth posting in our sale area on the Forum, we do get Flowbees asking where to buy bees:
https://forum.honeyflow.com/c/bee-breeding
Please include your location in the heading, to make it easier for people to find.

Horizontal gap hive is now completely normal. This is day 4 from when we first saw honey in ends.

. The girls are filling across the whole super at basically the same rate. Woo hoo.

New question. When is a queen cell about to hatch?

We found a georgous Queen cell on a frame. Large elongated and with a bulbous cap of paler wax. We put this in a split 9 days ago. Could this queen have hatched and be laying already?

Thanks for your continued support

If it was hatched already you’d see an empty cell that had been chewed through for her to emerge. Given you are asking the question I’m going to guess the queen in question hasn’t hatched. From memory, it takes about 16days. The first 2-4 days are an uncapped cell and the next 12-14days it is capped, and then the new queen chews through.

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Hi, I’ve just completed two walkaway splits and the book I was using for my queen “timetable “ says mating flights take place 8-12 days after hatching. So if she hatched the day after you put it in, then it would be just possible she’s mated and started laying-just.

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Is this preswarming behaviour?


Weather warmish 20.9 but overcast. This queen swarmed at this time last year. Going into hive tommorow. I’m just trying to learn some early signs before going into hive.

I think it’s important that we use correct terminology. A queen ‘emerges’ from the queen cell. Hatching happens on day 3 or 4, when the egg hatches into larva.
When you say the queen hatches, I think of a 4 day old in a queen cup, whereas you are talking about an emerging queen at day 16.
I used to think it doesn’t matter how you say it, because even old time Beekeepers say it wrong.
But I got the question ‘when is a queen cell hatching’ jumbled in my terms dictionary.
Don’t wanna be picky, just suggesting that flow people learn the terms and we all know what we are talking about.
Queen coming out of that peanut shape is ‘emerging’.

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Looks like normal bee activity to me.

I agree with @SnowflakeHoney, probably normal. From the positioning and postures of some of the bees on the brood box front look a bit like they are washboarding, although without a video, I can’t be sure.

However, the right thing to do, is exactly what you plan - an inspection. :blush:

There is some minimal washboarding but mostly clumping some bearding.

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Same advice then, inspect. :blush:

I still think your observations are fabulous. :wink:

How are people finding the nectar flow and your hive this season, in particular in the northern suburbs of Perth?

My hive has a consistent but seemingly slower build up this year. I still haven’t harvested but the last two years I’m harvested at least a frame or two by this point.

[quote="Dawn_SD, post:817, topic:8608, full:true"]

Same advice then, inspect. :blush:

I still think your observations are fabulous. :wink:
[/quote]

Multiple queen cells on 5 of the 10 brood frames. Brood on all frames bar one. One frame seems dedicated to drone cells. We took a small split.

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According to the text book (and I believe it’s truth @JeffH), they cap at day 8 and hatched at day 16 (can be 15 give and take), let give the Queen 1 week to mature (day 20-23) then waiting for the perfect weather to fly out (day 21-25)… Mating can take several days or 1 day? Then eggs can be seen on day 28 (she would have been back to recharge for 1 day and start laying at day 25-26) … They also said that eggs can be seen at day 23 at the earliest which means she will fly out at day 20 and got the mating business done in 1 day?

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Yep it is slower pace with my hives in Melbourne… The swarm season is also around 2 weeks later than last year… We did have a late frost or cold spells during September.

Does anybody want a swarm? There’s one to collect in the northern suburbs. I’m not looking to establish another hive so I’m not inclined to collect it. But if it doesn’t move on I might end up catching it and releasing it elsewhere if there are no takers.

It’s about 4m up, amongst palm fronds.

IMG-20181026-WA0002

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Wow, that looks humongous! Too hard to bring it 15,000 km away though… :blush: