Good evening. I am currently researching and am considering adding a HoneyFlow Hive. Not being able to view one in stores, I was wondering how fragile the plastic frames are in the field. I do not abuse my equipment but will they sustain repeated opening and closing for extraction? Will they get damaged with the hive tool?
Do I need to get a frame gripper to lift them out of the super to avoid damage?
I also see they are made of individual rows that are interconnected somehow, will they sag with the weight of honey?
Yes. Mine have done several years with no problems.
Not with usual careful application, which is what you want to do around bees anyway. They can be hard to lift out sometimes. I put the J hook under the non-extraction end of the frame, and lever it up while lifting with my fingers in the 2 indentations in the Flow key cover at the other end. They usually come out pretty easily that way.
No. Just do what I described above.
Not if the wires are as tight as they should be. Mine have never sagged.
I wouldn’t use a frame gripper to lift them as the elements of the flow frame need to be supported differently. If you try to lift a full frame by gripping a relatively few of the central pieces you run the risk of damage. However, there might be people who do it successfully.
The frames are built with solid ends and stainless tie wires top and bottom. All the movable elements sit in this support structure. To lift them, you use the hive tool to loosen both ends and then lift by the top corners. The wires hold it all together well and they don’t sag.
And there is no wearing of the frames in operation. They slide with a slight gap between them that the bees fill with wax. If you add up one opening and one closing operation for each time you extract honey, that’s not a lot of movements in a year. The non-sliding elements lock together with holes and pins.
There is a rather comical youtube video (the guy didn’t mean it to be comical, it’s just that he shows himself to be clumsy) where somebody attempts to demonstrate the construction and it all falls to pieces. When you see it happening you’ll realise that normal operation won’t be a problem
Hi again Plop, my reason for requesting you to put your location is that some parts of Australia have hive beetles & some don’t. I think flow frames present a few more challenges in areas where hive beetles are present than areas that don’t have hive beetles to worry about.
cheers
@down SD thank’s your info are important for me to ! But now I have a question… You wrote… the wire has to be correctly tight … I rec.d my FH2 at X’mas and do not use it until i finish my bee course starting next week… Dawn, should I do something with my honey wires also or live them like they are when they arrived ? God, I would not have any idea how to do that… .
Good morning @Dawn_SD… i did look at my honey frames and I think they are ok… They send them to me quite tight… so hope is correct. Thank you for sending me the video i kept it on memory… " just in case " ha ha…
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