This season I’ve decided to go a different route after having a poor honey season last year. The previous years I’ve done preemptive swarm splits on each colony which has stopped the colony’s swarming by weakening them and as a result haven’t had good honey crops. This year I’ve not done this and now the hives are overflowing with honey. I’m harvesting from each colony fortnightly now, 2 Fframes per hive, alternating weekly. In the past I would get one harvest in spring, mainly to remove the winter crop.
I know summer can be harsh and have experienced colony’s starve during the dearth but now I’m using the extra WSP box I’m confident there’ll be enough stores to see them through until the Marri flow.
Now I just need to look out for swarming signs and work from there.
Thanks guys,
I used the lemongrass on the first swarm and they were definitely were attracted to it but think the wax foundations are a must.
I can’t fix what is there without destroying the colony and starting again, or can I?
There are a couple of ways to do it. One is a long game the other the short.
Put a second brood box on, let the bees build it out nice and straight. When there are drawn look for the queen, making sure you see her in the new brood box. Then put the cross combed box above the queen excluder to let the brood hatch. You can then remove that old wonky box, cut out the comb and crush and strain to recover the honey and wax.
Turn the wonky box over so all the frames and cross comb come out in one piece. Put new frames in the brood box, find the queen and place her in the brood box. The rest should march back in and away you go. If you wanted you could look to salvage some of the mostly brood combs and use electric bands to hold them in place in the foundationless frames.
It sounds like you hive may not have been level side to side. It may pay to check that for the future. I’ve not had wonky comb be built when I’ve been level side to side.
Aside from my brood in the flow frames misadventure…pretty good.
(comment: I’m adamant that not all the brood laid in the flow frames developed into drones. The brood with the raised caps certainly did but the brood with flat caps didn’t. No major science behind my opinion except there’s no where near the number of drones in the hive I would otherwise have expected)
This is the first year I’ve had the scales and I only set them up at the end of August. Be aware there is a 40kg offset on the scale (i.e. the 5kg marker is actually 45kg). The red arc shows the misadventure, harvest and the cleanup associated with the brood in the flow frames. The blue arc is where I physically removed flow frames for harvest.
I’ve only used my hybrid super so far this year. Once I get a couple of flow frames reassembled (they’re in bits) I might consider putting the full flow super on; or if I feel really inspired I might actually get around to sealing my other hybrid super and use 2x hybrids this year.
Well first time Spring honey. My 3 harvests have all been in Feb-Mar when the forest of marri around here are in blossom
Having gone through last year without a drop of honey in the jar, as I speak, there is honey running into jars from the 2 middle frames. Just tested 16.5% water so happy with that.
Blossom was so scarce last year and this year the blossom is topsy turvy.
Have 2 giant yellow box trees which have been in blossom (in varying degrees) for the last 9 months. Some trees have blossomed twice.
I spit my one hive into two and put a second brood box on one at the same time as I put a super (not flow) on the other. The hive with the two brood boxes powered ahead and I put a flow super on it late August.
The hive with the one brood box is going to get its flow super later this week. I was using the honey super to build up bee numbers and will swap it out for the Flow super.
Based on my initial observations the two brood box hive is way ahead of the one brood. But I will see it though till Winter and think again on strategy.
Great news busso, I had the opposite this year with the 1 bb ahead of the 1 3/4 bb. The 1 bb does have a WSP above the qx beneath the hybrid super though and I’ve harvested that hybrid twice now. I’m not even seeing that much flowering!
Jarrah down the hill is starting to flower so that’s good news too.
I only have 1 broods, but due to the drought, I didn’t get a ton of my less than 20 colonies this year yet as in previous years. I dared to collect 8kg, and since then just observe a few hives gaining weight.
It’s strange, a couple of colonies gained 5kg the last week, others maintain their weight.
I doubt a double brood would have increased production in this drought.
I noticed though my splits are perky and even exude a honey smell.
It’s what a colony knows.
I’m hopeful.
There is a lot of areas in drought. The lower South West is probably not as bad off as other areas, but my town Busselton is to date about 25% down on annual rainfall, following on from 15% shortfall in last years rainfall.
I am thinking (more like hoping) there will be a lot of honey taken this year. Early signs are very good.
We just inspected our hive (1 BB with Flow super on top) on Tuesday and it is looking very healthy.
Super was put on 2 weeks ago, we got the hive and colony 2 months ago. Already can see honey building up in the super and it felt quite heavy, so thats good.
We have a fair bit of extra comb in the bb being built from the bottom of the bb frames and along the top as well into the qx… is this a concern?
(in pulling out the brood box outer frames we tore a fist sized section of ‘rogue’ comb that was hanging onto the bottom on the frame, revealing brood.)
Should we:
a.) cut off untidy comb that is built around the bb (underside of frames, along qx etc)
or
b.) ignore it and be glad they are so productive?
SECONDLY:
We have some moths breeding under the bb mesh on the bottom of the bb, in the groove where the tray board slides in, any tips for dealing with this, outside of crushing and removing. Perhaps firmer trays that fill out the groove more (as opposed to the standard foamy one)
thanks.
Comb between the FF and the BB through the QX is normal unfortunately
I think that Flow left too much bee space between them causing this issue.
As suggested your options are to leave it and let it fracture each time you do an inspection or clean it up each time.
I do minimal inspections on my hives as every time you open the lid the hive is penalized and it is pushed back.
WA is lucky that we have very few diseases, pests etc. It seems that some areas are worse for moth than others. I have no moth issues up where I am, but other do. I think that hive strength is the answer, a strong hive will keep the moths out, a weak hive will let them in. Maybe I am just lucky.
If you remove the cross comb between the FF and BB the girls will rebuild it to make access easier to the FF, this just makes extra work and slows honey production.
I harvested about 15 kg of honey from my flow hive last month and about 10 kg of virgin cut comb honey from my long hive before putting the FF’s in. Taking the frames for the cut comb has set the girls back a bit but I replaced the frames with wax foundation frames so they get a good restart and hopefully they will use the frames for brood and the FF’s for honey. Once the weather warms up again I will have a look at how they are going.
It is so cold at the moment that tonight the camera is showing no bee activity on the outside of the FF’s in the long hive at all, normally there is plenty of activity. You can see looking above the frames that they are packed up toward the middle of the hive area keeping the brood warm.
They are sods of things. I did have a real infestation of them when the split hives were building. I continued to remove web and grubs on a daily basis. The hives are strong now and the moth problem has gone. No doubt they will be around but as long as the hive is strong the bees will control them.
And yes I get the odd bit of web around the coreflute slides.
November are the last of the year and will be a little more social. This particular one will have a gadget and gear theme, with members and suppliers encouraged to bring in innovative or helpful tools.
Attended last night’s meet in South Perth. A few demonstrations - wiring up frames, decapping with a fork, and a handful of local equipment suppliers show casing various bits and bobs…
There was a big turnout - a lot of newbees from what I gathered, but no ‘beginners corner’… no flow hives to bee seen…
I attended one a couple of years ago when I was gathering info before getting into the Flow Hive. It was the same. I couldn’t mingle well but that’s probably more my fault than theirs as I’m not a socialite. Whenever I mentioned “Flow Hive” I was looked down upon like some spreader of disease.
I didn’t find that meeting particularly useful, or good value for my time. It was definitely more geared towards commercial beekeeping, so that is understandable. It was also heavy on suppliers flogging their stock.
There also was a demo on frame wiring and wax embedding. I wanted to ask some questions but didn’t get the chance and at the end I just saw some YouTube videos, and made an adaptation that suits my low volume of frames I need.
I was subscribed to their monthly email, until I received a bill for the emails, so unsubscribed from those too.
I’m pretty sure many will find these meetings very useful though.
Ha, must be a hills thing. Something I’m often accused of…
Never attended a meeting myself.
My mentors are all right here on the forum and they love talking Flow.
I’m starting to see the flow in this area slow down and will have a weekend off harvesting. All that key twisting and bottling is exhausting.
You wrote that in March. Just to reinforce that the climate is topsy turvey.
I saw a Marri tree next door with a limb in flower yesterday. 2-3 months early. Looking around I found a sprinkling of flower on other Marri trees but not mass bloom. We might be having Marri honey for Xmas.
Something I’m often accused of…
