Our box arrived the other day and we assembled yesterday. Like others, we found that the fit of the pieces was a bit unreliable, with some of the pieces having to be sanded or chiseled to fit together, but in the end we wound up with a good-looking and sound hive.
Whelp, Beethinking.com did not help with misc additional parts.
See comment from their website below.
This entrance reducer does not work for the Flow Hive
Iām switching to BrushyMountainBeeFarms.com for future standardized hardware.
It seems their prices are comparatively better too.
Time to break out the table saw and router.
I sure hope the Flow Frames work.
Steve,
Sorry about the issues on the entrance reducer. Thereās not a supplier in existence that makes a custom reducer for the Flow hive, as the entrance on the Flow hive is non standard due to the sloped bottom board design. If Flow wants us to make a reducer for it, we certainly can!
Otherwise it would be pretty simple to cut a piece of wood to the Flow entrance height and then chisel a couple reduced entrances.
Best,
Matt
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Thanks Matt, now you understand my plight. We do have a cold season, so I was befuddled that Flow provided no accessories.
I too bought a commercially available metal entrance reducer without realizing the flow hive entrance is different. I had to use my chisel to get things to fit snugly.
Normally, I would have built one from scratch, but, since I am new to beekeeping, I wanted to purchase something, see how well it worked, and then use the knowledge I gained to make my own next time.
Iāll be visiting Flow next week in Australia, so weāll add this issue to our brainstorming sessions!
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@beethinking Please let us know how it goes. A newsletter style update would be fascinating!
Thanks for everything,
Dawn
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we need more individual Flowhive parts in the shopā¦
so we can buy the bottom board assembly by itself, the roof, etcā¦ oh, and the Queen Dividerā¦
they also should have been into china by now to supply Honey Jars @ $1 including freight for Bulk ordersā¦
just sayin 
Hi folks. I donāt want to air issues in a public forum as I too was very excited to get my flow hive. I accepted the trimming to fit and related construction issues, but, when I got to the roof found that one planet and the ends were line not cedar. I have contacted flow hive three times including photos only to be told why they used cedar and assuring me that it is cedar. Has anyone else encountered this issue w your kits? Ours came from Lancaster. I am still excited to have this but this is somewhat of a downer. I have learned a lot and thank all of you for the help.
[quote=āgreekbecky, post:1, topic:5236, full:trueā]
I used to be quite active on the Flow Forums. I was an early supporter and very excited about getting my 2 Full Flow Hives. I was patient when many folks were upset about the slow delivery. I am very familiar with startups and how sometimes things happen that are not planned. I get all that, but my patience has ended.
I finally received my hives at the end of January. I put them together this weekend. Iām comfortable putting things together. Iām an engineer and have woodworking/machining experience, so this is not user error. The wood parts came from Lancaster, PA, the heart of the Amish country, four hours from where I live. The construction was beyond shoddy and unfinished. The millwork was hastily done, forcing me to trim/shim/fit most of the joints with a chisel. The cedar itself was low grade and heavily knotted (the vendor made a few extra bucks at this customerās cost). As expected, the knotty wood split when I drove the screws in the panels forcing me to glue and clamp many times. As I gently nailed the frame parts together, many of those splitā¦more wood glue and clamping. Of course, like many others I am still waiting for the flow parts. Wouldnāt it have been nice to expect a complete hive when it arrives? The whole end to end experience has left me cold.
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Sorry for the typos. Pine not line and roof panels not planets!
Looks rather piney to me too.
David,
All of the hives are produced at our location in Portland, OR, at a facility that doesnāt use pine for any products; we have no pine on site. Cedar varies dramatically in coloration depending on the age of the tree and the region from which it is harvested. Thus, you will find cedar can range from a deep red to almost white.
Best,
Matt
The wood in the right could definitely be cedar. I donāt for 1 second doubt beethinkingās position on this matter. I mill trees on my property and I can tell you that wood color can differ substantially within the same species. Often the heart wood and sap woods are very different colors.
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Thanks Matt and lhengst. That is really all I wanted was someone to directly answer instead of having a standard response wo commenting on the photo. I will move forward w the build and tung oiling.
And Matt, just ordered another deep cedar box from you, your customer service and help w what mates with the flow hive has been great.
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This is something which puzzles me a bit. I can to a degree accept that the side panels may have colours which donāt seem to match but surely putting David74ās roof panels in a package, it would have been obvious they did not match despite all being WRC.
I know your between a rock and a hard place trying to match the grizzles about slow delivery with the grizzles about quality so I am not going hard on this, but quality assurance is an area which needs some attention.
Weāve not been asked to match the color of the lumber throughout the packages. If Flow would like us to do thatā¦we could tryā¦but weāre producing hives from Western Red Cedar and packaging them as requested!
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Please donāt persue color matching WSC. I prefer the color variation, I think they are pretty beautiful, especially after treated with tung oil. I think @David74ās roof is going to be stunning.
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I like the variation too. You can even see huge color change in one side panel - I have some that go from deep brown, through red to a very pale, almost pine color. They are gorgeous. Thanks for what you do Matt, nobody does western red cedar hives better!
I like the color variations, you can see the ranges in the pictures I posted in this thread, I wouldnāt change a thing, it give each hive itās own unique character. If you try and color match, then youāll get complaints that the hive is either too light or too dark.
If you havenāt assembled it yet, there is a way you can check. Western red cedar is a lot lighter than pine. So weigh the dark piece, then weigh the light piece. If they weigh the same, they are both WRC. If it was pine or cypress, it would weigh up to 50% more, so if one piece was 10 ounces, a similar piece in pine would be 14 or 15 oz. WRC is 23lb per cubic foot, and pine is 28 to 42lb per cubic foot, depending on the type, cypress is 32lb per cubic foot:
Hopefully your result will prove it is WRC for you! 