Purchasing A Flow Hive - Questions

Hi all, my name is Will I’m 17 years old and I live in England. I’m thinking about purchasing the flow hive as I am very interested in the thought of being a beekeeper but really know very little about them and so the flow hive seemed perfect. Also I was planning on buying a Flow Hive without the box as I was going to “kill two birds with one stone” by Building the Hive as part of my A-Level Design and Technology Assessment and by being able to own bees. Before I Purchase one I have a few questions which I was wondering if someone could answer.

  1. What are the dimensions of the flow Hive?

  2. I can see they are available for pre order but when will they actually be available?

If someone could be kind enough to answer either of these for be I would be extremely grateful

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from another post, you may find this helpfull

http://forum.honeyflow.com/t/building-the-new-hives-when-they-arrive/443/9?u=martydallas

Thanks @Martydallas :smile:
Here is our new PDF with dimensions and modifications - http://www.honeyflow.com/faqs/modifying-a-langstroth-box-for-flow-frames/p/143

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G’day Will I used to teach DT here in UK if I can help I will.

Where do you live, perhaps we can get you to meet up with local beeks from here or a BBKA where we can get you some hands on help.

Here is a bee Source pdf of the dimensions http://www.beesource.com/files/10frlang.pdf

The better boxes are made of cedar, I assume your school has various jigs and lathes to cut the dove tails?

This box does not show the nice handle grips it is more like a National hive.

The Flow Super’s are the same size as the brood box, so basically you will need 2 brood boxes and an extra super if you so choose.

This one looks Better. It also show the Frames - I can send you an unassembled Frame if you want to cut your own?

This one is a nice image of how it fits together

This one is a good site as well
http://www.piteraq.dk/bier/beehive.html




More
http://www.fao.org/docrep/x0083e/X0083E06.htm#A. Beekeeping equipment






http://oceanstatebees.com/?p=384
http://oceanstatebees.com/classes/images/hivecomponents.pdf

screened bottom board but check the dimensions for Langstroth - may need some altering


http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/Plan%20files/pScreened%20bottom%20new.pdf
http://www.beesource.com/files/slatrack.pdf

http://dave-cushman.net/bee/roger_omf.html

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Absolutely agree with Dexter.
Flow frames are simply a honey extraction system. You still have to learn to look after your bees or you will be irresponsible and throw your money away.

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I agree with you guys but if Will is making a beehive for his DT project then we need to put him in the right direction so at least he can build the thing.

I take it @WillSames this is an A Level project?

While you’re building the Hive you can learn about bee keeping and need to understand what all the bits of the hive are for and how they come together to make a bee keeper and keep happy bees

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I think it’s great he’s starting so young. Definitely do what others are suggesting and do a ton of reading and research so you know what you are getting into. By the time you get a flow system in place you should have a lot of great information under your belt. You’ve got 8 months to go.

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You and Dexter are correct, and I thought the same thing while reading the initial post. But with some consideration I figured that any young man smart enough to see the potential of the Flow Hive, and find us to ask questions of, about just building the boxes, no doubt plans on educating himself about the care and feeding of the bees also.

Will, good luck on your project.

I am sure that everyone here will be happy to help you in your endeavor!

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The first thing to learn is the life cycle of the honey bee. I mentor three beginners and I can usually trace misunderstanding and inability of reading the hive to a complete lack of these important basics. Another thing you HAVE to be able to do is see eggs.
Good luck Will…

What would you say is the most important piece of information regarding this relationship to life cycle and reading the hive that you could pass on?

As mentioned before on the forum, swarming is natural reproductive behaviour but if a beekeeper wants a honey crop he has to control this and harness the bees energies towards staying together as a strong colony.
A beekeeper has to understand that a bee is an egg for three days, a larva for 5 and a pupa for 8,13 or 16 days so what you see on a frame is an indication of queen-rightness
If you see eggs likely you have a queen
Has your hive swarmed? Sealed queen cells and no eggs,but open brood…Queen swarmed up to a week ago.
How long does a bee live and how long does it remain in the hive as a houseworker and a forager?….Young bees are the ones that have developed hypo pharyngeal glands producing the food to raise brood. Old bees can revert to nursing duties but are not very effective, that’s why emergency queens produced by old bees are scrub queens.
This is the sort of stuff you can work out for yourself and apply to what you see in the hive.
It’s no use saying, “I don’t think the hive has swarmed…it’s full of bees”. You should be able to work out whether it has or not.
The other single important thing is that you cannot prove you have a queen if your bees don’t raise queen cells from a test frame.

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You might be jumping the gun there a bit, how to you know he doesn’t have the intention to do all those things over the next 8 months or so?

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No, absolutely not my friend. Like you, I only reply to what I see written in the post. This is a forum to help the thousands of Flow Newbees. We need to give them reasonably accurate information. You wouldn’t want anyone giving you a bum steer, would you? You sounded a bit harsh on that young bloke, I thought Valli had a more gentle & helpful approach. Only a small % of the new Flow’ers will stick it out long term, we both know that. You sound like a relatively new beekeeper, you’ve probably seen a few start & give it away in your time as a beekeeper, I’ve seen heaps. There would be an unbelievable amount of beekeeping equipment sitting around in sheds etc. from failed attempts at beekeeping. Even more so since the arrival of SHB. How much Flow equipment will end up the same way?

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Hi Faroe, the modification instructions include internal dimensions but not the external size (length and width) or material thickness. The posts below show various dimensions for width (16.5 and 16.25 inch). I wanted to make a SHB trap and slotted bottom board in advance of the FlowHive delivery so am interested to know the specifics for the FlowHive info of material thickness (ive seen 22mm and 3/4 inch mentioned in different references), and also box width and box depth (external dimensions). thanks

Flow Hive Dimensions
Hi @Andrew_1101, One of our staff members has measured the 2 Flow Boxes.

Langstroth 8 Deep –Standard size

Box width – 35cm
Box height – 24.5cm
Box length - 50.5cm
Base length – 57.5cm

Langstroth 10 Deep – Standard size

Box width – 41cm
Box height – 24.5cm
Box length - 50.5cm
Base length – 57.5cm

I thought I would also include one of our FAQs about SHB - http://www.honeyflow.com/faqs/small-hive-beetle-shb/p/68
Small hive beetle SHB and this system - Can they enter and is there a need for maintenance?
In: Frequently Asked Questions Viewed: 4,145 times

We have a lot of small hive beetle in our area. We have designed the frames with beetles in mind.

Beetles cannot get into the honey trough or movement mechanism. Unlike other plastic frames we have made sure there isn’t any beetle homes.

We have lost one Flow™ Hive to the hive beetles. The Flow™ Frames weren’t damaged but they did need a clean using a hot water hose, hot enough to melt beeswax.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

Thanks Faroe, that is perfect. The router and power saw have been put to good use and the slatted board is all cut and ready to stain/treat and assemble. Thanks again.

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Awesome :slight_smile: Glad to help :bee:

Hi All,

I was like Will n started beekeeping almost blind. We needed a project in our schools Agriculture program. I was rIsing chickens already so wanted a unique different project. Leafing thru our schools government Ag projects I spotted Beekeeping. At the time we didn’t have a local club so cast off on this venture with only reading a couple more small books our school library had (which wasn’t much). At least we have the Internet n gobs of info n bee clubs now. As a youth I raised up to 8 hives hit n miss. It was a great 7 or 8 years of learning then off to college then the army (Vietnam 1966-67). While I was gone my dad had some troubles n lost them all.

Now 55 years later n wiser I am again starting up several hives n learning again ! A lot of stuff is returning to my 70 year old brain from the cobwebs of time. Give it a whirl Will. And do some studying n find a mentor as well. It’s much more fun with help … Enjoy.

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