Don’t really know the pros or cons of an excluder or not.
The “natural beekeepers” have been dissing the flow hive because it is not “natural” and one of the things they said was that you have to use an excluder with the flow hive.
I don’t know enough to have an opinion one way of the other.
There is nothing wrong with using an excluder, it does not harm the bees in any way, just prevents the queen from moving up into the super to lay brood. As long as the bees are free to come and go as they please and chemicals are kept to an absolute minimum thats natural beekeeping to me. The bees choose whether to use the Flow frames or not. They choose to build on foundation or make natural comb (many of us use a combination of both) and they choose to stay in the hive or go somewhere better. In my opinion, a well managed hive is the best practice for keeping bees as many of the wild colonies are susceptible to pest and diseases that may be the demise of the colony. In a managed hive the beekeeper controls the pests, the diseases and humanely re-houses the older queens and swarms.
no beekeeping is natural really if they want to split hairs over it, natural would be leaving them as a wild colony
Yeah I said that. Specifically mentioned top bar hives. Didn’t go down well.
Haha… we could go on forever with this one. I too agree wild swarms are fantastic sources of bees. There was a study done here in Australia a few years ago by the Dept of Agriculture which found a large proportion of the wild colonies had either died out after a few years or were in the process is dying due to disease and pests in particular wasp, small hive beetle, moth, EFB, AFB and nosema. I took in a swarm last year and found that it was infected with chalkbrood, fortunately it was curable by replacing the queen and all the brood frames but this took most of the summer to fix.
@weaver Stuart you can tell them the excluder can come off in winter so the bees can get to the honey in the normal super (not Flow Supers). They may be worried the queen will not have access to the honey in winter when the girls huddle.
Here in the UK you don’t need a super of honey above the brood box in winter if you have a Langstroth box or a 14 x 12 as the brood box space is big enough to contain sufficient stores to over winter. If you do leave that super by the time you inspect in spring the queen has laid in it.
If you have a National then a lot of beekeepers on BS Nationals run brood and a half then that super would be on top (usually)
As for wild swarms around here…judging by the number of marked queens I’ve caught I would hazard that most swarms come from fellow beekeepers’ badly managed colonies.
Hi. If you really don’t want to do any inspection at all, you can actually get away with it, maybe for a year or two. Eventually, bees will swarm (which means you loose the honey and half of your bees, but no big deal, they will eventually regrow and gather more honey. Now with the Flow Hive, the chances of swarming diminish because you will be getting the honey out) or a pest will get them. I recommend reading: “The Practical Beekeeper”. It is a book for people that do not want to spend a lot of time with the bees.
About the inspections, you don’t need to do them yourself. At lest in Texas, you can call the state inspector and they will do it for you. You can also always find a beekeeper that can do it for you. You may have to share some honey though!
Bees are like any other pets. Even if you have automatic feeders, they still need a little time from you.
Regards
Captain Davo, if I’m running just the one brood box what would I do with the two brood frames I pull from the center? Make some fritters like @JeffH 
. Nah seriously what one do?
Gooday Macca ,
Find the queen and make sure you do not send her Up with the two Frames you put into your honey super above . The brood you have located above (assuming you have a queen excluder ) will hatch and strengthen the bee numbers as usual . the empty cells created will now be filled with nectar to be honey . this will happen quickly as no brood will be unhatched in 24 days time . This also has the benefit of cycling old brood comb out of the brood box and i recomend you recycle a third of your old brood comb every year .
There should be little drone comb on the centre two frames in the brood box , but if so , just cut them out before you place them above the queen excluder or choose brood frames with no drone comb
If you only have one box ,brood and honey , consider a split with the two frames or three frames , buy a queen first , pre rooted and you can go from strength to strength this summer . Two hives give you many more options in the future and if a queen fails , just recombine and create a stronger larger hive .
Hope that helps and the weather is kind if you go this way . prepare to feed if honey flow is interupted -
Cheers The Captain .
‘Pre rooted’? How eloquent.