Safety of Flow Honey for sale

Flow Hive
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This is from our FAQs page - https://www.honeyflow.com/faqs/p/22?tag=22

Maintenance & Cleaning

https://www.honeyflow.com/faqs/cleaning-frame-maintenance/p/67

Cleaning and Flow™ Frame maintenance

We haven’t found the Flow™ comb itself needs cleaning if it stays in the hive - the bees do a great job of keeping it clean. If you remove Flow™ Frames from the hive and store them for a while they may need cleaning. You can do this by using hot water (just hot enough to melt wax). A hot water hose is good. Set the Flow™ comb to ‘cell open’ position, this allows the water to run quite easily through all parts of the frame.

We have designed the honey trough at the bottom of the frame so that any remaining honey can drip back into the hive for the bees to use. If the honey leak-back gap remains clear this works well; however, if the bees block it up some honey may remain in the honey trough after harvest. Clear the leak-back gap prior to harvest and inspect the honey trough. If the honey trough is dirty it can be cleaned from outside the hive using a bottle brush or something similar.

If you are storing your Flow™ Frames for any length of time outside the hive, ensure they are kept away from the light as the Flow™ frame plastic is UV sensitive. Store the frames in a cool, dry, dark location.

https://www.honeyflow.com/faqs/does-the-honey-in-the-bottom-of-the-flow-frames-ever-go-mouldy-ferment-or-crystallize-if-so-what-can-i-do-about-it/p/86

Does the honey in the bottom of the Flow™ frames ever go mouldy, ferment or crystallize? If so, what can I do about it?

We recommend cleaning Flow™ Frames at the end of the summer, after harvesting is finished for the year.
This is easy to do without removing the frames from the super or the super from the hive. You can squirt water into the trough and then let it drain out.
If there are still signs of dirt, mould or crystalised honey, you can use a bottle brush to loosen it and then wash out with warm water.

https://www.honeyflow.com/faqs/do-i-need-to-clean-the-flow-frames/p/87

Do I need to clean the Flow™ Frames?

Apart from the trough at the bottom, you don’t need to clean Flow™ Frames unless you detect disease in them. You will need experienced beekeepers to give you advice on disease prevention and response for your area.

The plug for the honey collection trough is designed with tiny grooves that allow a bee lick up any residue honey that collects behind the plug. Sometimes the bees block these grooves with propolis (a resin bees use to plug any holes in the hive) but it is easy to clean this out by removing the plug. We haven’t experienced propolis build-up in the frames themselves.

https://www.honeyflow.com/faqs/flow-frame-sterilisation-irradiation-disease-control/p/145

Flow™ Frame sterilisation / irradiation / disease control

Heat treatment: Flow™ Frames can handle hot water up to 70˚C.

Chemical treatment: The plastics chosen have good chemical resistance. We will be testing various chemicals to evaluate this soon.

Irradiation: We have tested the Flow™ Frame parts with multiple doses of 15kGy gamma rays. We load tested the irradiated parts and tested them to destruction. The results were: 1 dose had little effect; 2 doses had minimal effect; 3 doses made the plastic significantly more brittle. We will be testing further to see if this causes any failures, but at this stage we can say the Flow™ Frames can be irradiated twice at 15kGy.

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The first frame I harvested ended at a low angle of about 1.5º. A week later when I harvested the second frame, I increased the angle to about 3º. The final frame was harvested at a measured angle of 4º. 27days later I inspected the frames before harvesting again. Most of the honey had drained back into the hive to be eagerly lapped up by my ever vigilant little ladies. However there was one pretty little spot of grey mould about 10mm into the channel of the first frame I had harvested. The honey in this frame would have been draining back for one week at a very low angle.

I did what any self respecting scientist would do and ate it. Sweet, slightly nutty taste. I imagined it was like flor sherry but there really wasn’t enough to taste properly. I’m still here almost a week later, perhaps slightly less sane but otherwise in vibrant good health for a 66 year old who was never going to know better than to nibble grey mould that was not suspended in cloudy beer or encrusting the surfaces of aged cheese. . My only regret is that I didn’t take a pic of my tiny fungal feast.

The Flow frames are elegantly designed, functional bits of kit and thank you, Cedar for patiently refining your design to the point where it has worldwide impact and appeal. Most weeks I enjoy a breakfast with the now retired principal of the Central School you attended. He remembers you as a thoughtful, intelligent, student and I’m glad he encouraged his teachers to inspire creativity and enquiry in their classes.

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brilliant! we can add you to this list now:

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Hi Jack, I discovered Human Bot Flies on the internet. I read that entomologists, when they get infested with them let them crawl out of their skin where other people want them yanked out straight away. Apparently letting them crawl out natural is less painful.
In this video, a bloke got 3 removed. On the 3rd one he gave the pain 10/10


So the lesson there is: If you ever visit some of the countries in, I think the Northern parts of South America, wear lots of mosquito repellent. The bot flies ambush mosquitoes in flight & glue eggs onto their bodies, that is when humans are nearby. The mosquito lands on a human, the glue melts with the eggs landing on the skin. The eggs hatch & the larvae crawls under the skin, aided by I’m guessing, a local anesthetic. That would explain why the bloke on the video had them close together.

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jeff: I am not even going to watch that video! Horrific. Ignorance can be bliss.

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Yep. Give me the crocodiles and the tiger snakes and the taipans and the funnel webs and the irukandji and the blue ringed octopus and the white pointers and the cone shells and the stone fish and the bullrouts …

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Hi Jack, as a lover of the natural world, I find it fascinating that the fly has figured out an engenius method of getting the eggs onto the host.

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Too right!!!
I got a couple and the idea of the blooming’ things wiggling about till they were ready to leave was much more alarming than yanking them out I can assure you. :rage:

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I left one or two dangerous critters off my list and I added an extra snake because a tiger snake bit me 15 or so years ago. A chap not too far from where I live recently died a week after being bitten by a taipan.

Here’s an interesting article from a US site identifying their two most dangerous animals. Bee stings come a distant second but still well in front of really dangerous looking critters such as bears.

No prizes for guessing the most dangerous critter in the USA!

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Good morning Dee, I can’t give your comment a heart. If I did that, it would mean that I like the fact that you got 2 of the critters. As it would appear, your part of an elite group to have had the experience. Not an experience you’d want repeated, I dare say.

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oooops…post made in error

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Hahaha, that certainly made me laugh :slight_smile:
The following experiments of insects under the skin, not so much. As you say, give me the sharks, snakes, spiders, etc!

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Oh, that was a hell of a ride. I went from the bot fly removal to a 20 year old zit removal to a whole host of plastic surgery botch ups and here I am back again just to say, thanks Jeff. And now, I’m off to cook dinner.:confounded:

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Hi & well done:) you are welcome. There’s some interesting stuff on the net, especially from Nat Geo. There’s a couple of other interesting videos, they may have popped up during your ride. Zombie Snails, there’s the Jewel Wasp video. Also the must watch Honey Badger video, not to mention the Hornets From Hell video. All interesting & stuff we’ll remember the rest of our lives.

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This one is a winner- but viewer discretion is advised for apiarists and all bee loving people- it might give you nightmares:

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The images, the music, the everything made me nauseous!! {{I’m glad I watched to the end. Nature is incredible!!}}

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It’s horrifying isn’t it?? The music- the narration- and those damn hornets! How I hate them- mass murderers! The bees ingenious defense at the end saves this little film from being a vision of bee hell

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