A client asked me to check his 4 Flow hives that weren’t producing any honey. This bloke is not hands on, so he wasn’t going to physically inspect any frames. He forgot to mention that one of his hives had fallen backwards & was on it’s back on the ground. I found 3 of the 4 hives, including the one on it’s back had almost full Flow supers. Obviously they weren’t draining. He decided for me to take the Flow frames home to harvest on my table.
After cracking the frames a dozen times each with 2 keys, very little honey came out. We, with the client eventually agreed to take them all to my main bee yard for my bees to clean the honey out.
After a frustrating 4-5 hours, which included cleaning rancid honey out of every channel that contained honey, I decided to put my thinking cap on properly. This resulted in me cracking a Flow frame with the 2 keys, except this time I managed to lock the 2 keys together holding the frame in the open position permanently. That applied constant pressure on the moving parts, which actually moved them, resulting in honey flowing, fantastic!!!
I found that after 5-6 minutes I was able to remove the keys without the moving parts springing back. I’m ecstatic at the results.