I think I mentioned this once before. If we get a little honey spill while working the bees, we know how much it is, then we can make a judgement as to whether we think the bees can deal with it, or not. It’s the “known unknown” that worries me. We know there could be a leak while harvesting from the back of a flow hive, but we don’t know how bad it is. That photo of @Heron’s really shows how bad a leak could be. It probably depends on what type of honey the bees produce wax from. I’m not far away from Heron, I’m sure that I’ve seen capped honey that looks similar. On the other hand, I’m sure that I’ve seen capped honey where I reckon the caps would hold together pretty well. In that case there would be little to no leakage.
That has never been an issue with traditional harvesting.
There is also the issue of the possibility of crystallized or jellybush honey in flow frames. How would a commercial operator deal with that, if it ever happened?
I’m only a commercial operator from the point of view that I have around 50 stationary hives. I can not see how that flow frames would enhance my operation. Price difference aside.
I agree wholeheartedly with @Michael_Bush in relation to keeping your frames all the same size. Whether it be ideals, deeps, just keep it all the same. That way you can move frames from the brood to the honey super & vice versa. I only told this to a bloke today in relation to box sizes. If you want to use 8 frame supers, use all 8 frame supers. That way all of your lids, bottom boards & QX’s all fit. He’s choosing to go with all deep 10’s.
My point being that flow frames don’t work in the brood.
Maybe other more serious commercial operators might have a different point of view.
Yes for sure Bill. The ill prepared & inexperienced beekeepers that are doomed to failure, as described by @jasonjetplane happens with traditional hives also. I see that quite regularly. I think it’s more challenging to keep & maintain a hive in good health than to actually harvest the honey. The honey crop is a reward for a job well done.
However, as I’ve observed, sometimes the first crop can be easy for the inexperienced, it’s maintaining the colony for future harvests can be the problem.
I third what @Dawn_SD seconded Jeff, and heartily second that part above. Speaking as an inexperienced beekeeper with just two years under my belt, I am at that exact point now. I’ve done enough of the maintenance & made enough mistakes to see why people give up after one or two tries.
When someone says, “if it weren’t for Flow Hives, I could not keep bees;” they should not keep bees until they seek education about the hobby. That statement says they only expect to harvest honey but have no idea about the other 364-1/2 days of beekeeping.
One of my new students, a fine young man.with Asperger’s Syndrome, watched the early Flow video, and of course fell for it hook, line, and sinker. He’ll be going in to winter with a single partially drawn deep, has never opened the hive since April, and plans no mite management because the video said, “no disturbance to the bees”. If anyone knows about Asperger’s, they are usually very passionate about a single subject; his being Flow hive. Once they think they’ve learned or mastered something, it can be difficult to change their beliefs. I’ve been working with his parents (wonderful people) to try and help him to understand that the Flow super must come off for the winter, mites have to be dealt with, and, if the bees don’t make it through winter to just treat it as a learning experience and move forward.
I wish I had this young man’s dedication and focus.
Hi Ed, you/we just have to back off & let things happen. Let folks learn the hard way.
Lots of people did get into bees because of the interest generated by flow at the start. A lot have fallen by the wayside. Some have stayed, that’s always good.
I think @Dawn_SD got back into bees because of flow.
Sort of not quite true, but some truth in it. When we moved from the UK to the US, we had 4 hives - WBC hives, which are double walled construction, but British National in frame size. We had to give them away, as we could not bring them to the US. That was 20 years ago, long before Flow hives existed.
When we bought a home in San Diego, the City was extremely unfriendly to bees and any livestock within City limits (including chickens, pigs etc). Not that any homes within 20 miles of us have enough space for large livestock! We really wanted to start beekeeping again, but we couldn’t do it legally.
Finally in 2012, the City got worried enough about CCD in bees that the regulations were reviewed and overturned. They decided that urban beekeepers could have 2 hives on their property, with certain boundary and “flyover” restrictions. However, nobody told us about that. Why would they? We had no idea that they had changed the rules.
In 2015, I was watching CNBC while I worked on the stock market (my current day job), and I saw a brief article about the Flow hive. I mentioned it to my husband, and he got so excited, that we re-investigated the local regulations on beekeeping. We discovered that we were now allowed to keep bees within the City limits. We would have kept them in traditional hives before that, but the article about Flow drove us to look into everything again. So we didn’t start beekeeping again just because the Flow hive is available, but it certainly prompted us to see whether we could make it work in our home.
We now have 2 Flow hives at home, and one traditional hive at an “out-apiary”.
The leakage issue has been an ongoing issue for us as mentioned, hence the flow frame extraction set up I have made. We can lose up to 25% of a frames’ honey, it’s devistating to see that honey on the ground around the hive and realising that it has flowed over bees, brood, eggs, etc not to mention the loos of the honey. In the photo I extracted 4 frames with about a litre of leakage overall.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the flow frames have merit it just their design needs a little refinement.
For what it’s worth we became beekeeps because of the Flow Hive, now I have 3 hives 2 of which are Langstroth on properties in the Hinterland and plan on many more, actually people keep asking me to put hiives on their land and maintain them
I started beekeeping in 2013. I was convinced here in southeastern Indiana we need double deep 10 frame brood boxes to make lt through winter.
In late 2015 I got my Flow hives that were only 8’s. In 2016 I experimented with my brood boxes consisting of 2 deeps and 1 medium the other hive 1 deep and 1 medium. 1st year was hive buildup and seal Flow Frames. In 2017 I was able to harvest 30 pounds honey from the smaller of the 2 hives (1 medium and 1 deep), split the 1m/2d into 1m/1d and 1d and just allowed them to build up and seal Flows this year.
Seams the smaller the hive the easier it is to care for. I couldn’t believe how well the smaller hive did when I expected the opposite.
The Flow frames / single deep brood box is nearly full of honey but I will leave that for them to feed on this winter. All my hives may be single brood boxes next year… we’ll see.
Last year (2016) I put the partially sealed Flow supers in the freezer for 48 hours and then in storage for winter and re-installed in March. (2017) This year I plan to leave them on so bees can feed on the honey if need be.
I have found the honeybee to be more susceptible to heat rather than cold. There was a swarm that stayed on my picnic table all night this spring and it got below freezing… they were fine.
I wouldn’t wrap my hives in tarpaper cause that will allow the hive to build up moisture and eventually freeze, it needs ventilation.
Are you sure you’re not giving them too much space? They seem to do better with less, they will swarm more often… you can catch the swarms and start new hives. I’ve always wondered how you could be saving the bee’s by squishing queens, seemed more human greed.
Another plus is you will always have younger, fresher, healthier hives.
Neither would I.
I would use decent 50mm foil faced house insulation
A well insulated hive, especially on top, will not suffer from condensation. The bees know how to ventilate without interference.
