Hi, Harvest 2 centre frames , every thing went well first time harvest , 1 .5 litres per frame .
Tried to next 2 frames either side but nothing came out. what honey we got from first 2 was great . Any suggestions There were some not capped , would that be of concern
If 80% of the cells are capped it can be extracted with no problem about it fermenting but did you remove the frames to visually check they were capped? I would expect 2.5 to 3 kgs of honey per frame. Honey that is not capped has too high a water content in it and can ferment pretty quickly.
It wonāt be your only harvest this season, especially if you get some reasonable rain there.
Cheers
Just as a postscript to this discussion following a strip down and clean of the flow frames at the end of September we have just done our first harvest. In the eight weeks since, the six frames gave a yield of a tad over 20kg and our biggest harvest. Crazy stuff. We thank the bees for their patience!
Thanks for the up date Chris, that is the sort of yield to expect.
When you ācleaned-upā the Flow Frames what did you find, crystallized honey or frames with āJelly Bushā honey? If there is much Tea Tree in your area producing a bit darker honey that was a difficult job to clean out of the frames without using hot water I would suspect Jelly Bush. But from your recent yield the issue has been sorted out.
Cheers
Pete it was a mixture of crystalline honey and severe propolis buildup in misaligned cells. In many instances the propolis was stretching across the cell break. It was a very gummy in texture. Combined with a coating of crystalline honey on the cell surface, the any runny honey was never coming out. It only really drained when we manually uncapped the cells. As such fairly confident it wasnāt jelly bush, more a lack of close observation last season when things didnāt seem right.
Hi Sea Bees, Can I ask how you stripped down the flow frames? I have two frames that are āstuckā with only 100 mls of honey being extracted, despite being fully capped. Iād love to salvage the honey but not sure how to go about it.
Thanks, Julie
Like thisā¦ but messierā¦:
https://www.honeyflow.com/faqs/all/minor-repairs-complete-flow-frame-re-assembly/p/180
Or you may choose to decap, drain/spin, disassemble and reassemble.
Lots of very hot water, gentle scraping, picks. Didnāt go as far as a complete strip As in the link but each frame took an hour or so to clean. Check the opening key action and alignment looks look before returning to the hive.
Is this a common problem with Flow frames?
It is no more common with Flow Frames than traditional frames and is usually found to be either that the honey has crystallized in the frame or the bees have been bringing in Jelly Bush nectar. The end result is the honey doesnāt come out like it should.
Cheers
Sounds harder to fix with flow frames though
Probably seems harder the first time, but that is how it is with most things. Iām lucky that with both Flow Hives and traditional as soon as I see Jelly Bush when I do an inspection I remove the Flow Supers and fit traditional supers and do a crush and strain of the frames as Jelly Bush wonāt spin out in my electric extractor even given an hour.
As I have said before that there are good things about Flow Hives and some bad in my opinion, the same applies to traditional Langstroth hives. It is all about making modifications and adapting to what we have to work with.
Cheers
What does Jelly Bush look like?
I donāt think we have it here in WA. But Iāve been wrong once before.
It is a darker color honey than is typical here, I see a slight reddish hue in it. We have a common bush on the East Coast with the common name of a Tea Tree, prefers sandy light soil and can be a shrub of a metre to trees of 10 meters depending on the species of tree. They can be mauve, red or white flowers. Google āTea Treeā and there is a heap to read there. When there is a flow of it on it lasts about 8 to 10 weeks here. A very pretty shrub when the is a drought on and no nectar in the the flowers.
Tea trees.
Iād think we do. But Iām neither an arborist or a botanist.
@fffffred This a link about the tea trees in Western Australia.
https://florabase.dpaw.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/5850