HI there,
First FF post.
Did a NSW Dept Primary Industry flow hive course yesterday in Berry and was awesome.
Our course presenter Bruce White suggested adding an exra super to help preventing swarming
and also to help build a larger, stronger Hive.
My question then is has anyone use flow frames in a normal Langstroth box and rotated them to
the flow super as required to harvest?
Cheers
I am not quite sure why an extra super would help prevent swarming if you empty your flow frames when they are full and capped.
I have added an ideal foundationless super (above flow box) at some stage to give them more space and work, but it only slowed down the ff filling for a couple of weeks. Not sure the additional ideal was necessary, but it made me feel better, because I thought I had too many bees out there washboarding and boarding. Which by the way stopped after adding the ideal.
If he meant another brood box, it would make more sense, but even there would be other strategies one could employ in our climate.
I take out a brood frame once in a while to give to another of my hives and replace with a foundationless frame. That way my comb is always freshly built and pristine.
This worked very well for my first season as a beekeeper, but I am sure there are plenty of other strategies around.
Early spring I will split my strongest hives and intend to manage the season as above.
No. Not really sure why anyone would want to do that. My bees are filling them perfectly well in the Flow super box. I smooshed on some burr comb to make the plastic frames smell of the hive, and several frames are about 50% full two weeks later. I would put a traditional super on top if I had to leave the hive for a week or two during the nectar flow, but as @Webclan says, I expect that will just slow them down with filling the Flow frames.
Did he mean to run a double brood box? That would make sense.
Cheers
Rob.
Yep, essentially a 2nd brood box but I was just thinking of having extra
honey frames I would not be able to extract but they can always be used by
the bees as a food source esp over winter. Apparently a second box helps ,
but not always, stop swarming and then go back to one over winter or keep
it on but frameless.
You would not want the queen to lay eggs in your flow frames. Elsewhere in this forum people have discussed what a mess it makes of the flow frames if that happens.
Bruce is a strong advocate of the single brood, it may be that he was advising a second box for swarm management in spring? This is what I do also. Single brood with a Flow super and then a standard super on top. it does slow them down filling the Flow frames as @Dawn mentions but its a catchall for the strong nectar flows. Come spring, the standard super is placed on top of the brood to allow for honey and capped brood frames to be moved up and allow for extra laying space in the brood box.
Thanks Rod, that sounds more like it ! It was swarm management but was
wondering exactly which way to go . Thanks