Top Bar Hive Flow Forum

Don’t have any photo handy but you are correct, they are split down the middle and I fit a wax sheet in the plastic frame.

Hey Will,

your design inspired to get onto SketchUp and make mine so thanks! One thing I noticed about your design was that you planned to use half/demi frames along with the flow frames. Unless there was some special reason to use half frames- I think you would be better off sticking to deep frames- otherwise you will need to make the box various depths- or have some kind of spacer in place to take up the extra room under the medium frames. Deep frames will be better for making splits, removing combs for other hives, plus your hive could be much larger without getting too long, etc.

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They are like these technosetbee ones- ‘Lazy’ frames:

I am thinking of getting some for my nuc hives- seems an easy way to get foundations in.

HI! I’m glad my input on the forum as been useful ! About the half frames! Actually at the beginning i was more into making a Kenyane TBH were no frames are needed but since I’d like integrate the FlowFrames I’m a bit stuck with that, so i was considering the half frames. But u might be right i should consider the full frames for the simpicity. Arrrfff… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

But about the “lazyFrames” yeah… I’m not a big fan of thoses but only for the concept of it. U might get a bit more Honey cose bees have less wax to build but like in the “Dadant” hiving methods it’s a lot about profite and production rate. Even if we get less honey atlist we let the bees do what they know. i don’t know…open topic.

Beware! Website in French :wink:

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@WillB This misses the point of foundation,. It’s not the ‘having less wax to build’ that makes foundation more productive, the amount of wax in foundation is minuscule, and could be drawn by productive bees in a matter of hours/days if necessary. Foundation is used to to provide a standard cell size so the bees build worker cells which leads to more workers in the hive. The more workers in the hive create a more productive hive (which in turn provides more excess)

In your Dadant example you seem to link production rate of the system (Dadant sized frames) to mistreatment of the bees. I have seen this repeated by ‘natural beekeepers’ likening Langstroth boxes to battery hen farming. The methods you use and the system you use to manage your bees/hives can be (and often are) completely unrelated.

Hi RBK.
Could not agree more about about system/ use methods of course (even if any system/objects comes with it’s own “way of using it” And I can’t hide that my heart balance a bit for “natural beekeeping”. But I would not talk about battery farming either. (Only for a few industrial beekepers. And actually I don’t think there is so many in the world comparing to “none pro”). But anyway it’s all about transcending our habits and knowledge that we are here for. If not we wouldn’t even had been interested in Flow :wink:

Hi Busso

Thanks again for your tip, been thinking about it quite a bit, what I am going to do is add another small super to the other side for honeycomb production, just gotta make myself another queen excluder.

I think that would defeat the way these hives can be managed. At the other end you would use a dividing board to expand and contract the brood throughout the year. You could also make a split- and have two hives on one if required

Can you just move your queen excluder to the left- and have comb honey combs beside the flow frames? Leave the other end for the follower board and expansion/contraction?

@Schnucki @Suses70

How did your experiments work? Did the bees thrive? Did they use the Flow frames?

In short, do you recommend this approach?

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We got our Flow Hive in February 2016 and we made a hybrid top-bar-long-hive. It’s been 13 months since we had our bees and since then we’ve collected about 7 kilos, taping only one comb at a time. We are in Murwillumbah N-E NSW.
We started with the best intentions so we actually made the brood box 50% bigger so it has 12 combs, we figured it would give them plenty of space for brood. To do that we cut one of the side of the original box and joined it (see pics)
We used the original bottom board under the Flow box and made the brood bottom board to match with screen. This screen is not as small as the original and unfortunately some bees do get through.
It took a while for them to spread to the Flow Hive side but then again we only started with a nucleus hive of five combs.
We made mistakes: the following board doesn’t work, some bees managed to sneak through and then build wild comb. So we took it out and put combs in and let them go for it. We have the entrance in the middle of the brood box, i don’t know if it’s a mistake or not but that’s where it is!
One thing we’re happy about is having hung the base on the rafters of our aquaponic shed, the bees are protected from the rain and since there are no legs the pesky ants can’t get to them.
We don’t seem to have a lot of honey for one year (we used to have been long time ago) but then again we started from scratch.
Right now we’ve been neglecting the brood box because of a multitude of personal problems (topped up by the flood three weeks ago!) so we would be VERY grateful for any experienced beekeeper in N-E NSW or S-E QLD to give us a hand.
Here is our hive.






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Bravo! This looks really cool!

Thank you! We had a lot of fun doing it, but we should have put the door at the end rather than the middle!

Very Nice!

I have just made a very similar hive and installed the bees a few weeks ago. there is so much in common with your hive: it’s clear great minds think alike! :wink: I was worried whether or not the concept would work so I am very happy to hear that you managed to harvest some honey- even if it wasn’t a huge amount. Very impressed with how cleverly you modified the original flow hive- well done- very neat!

Please come back next year and let us know how season two went- hopefully the low honey was just becuase the bees were busy building out the 13 frames. perhaps when you get a chance to look in there you will find quite a bit of honey stored in the brood combs…

Concerning the entrances: could you just drill a hole through to make another smaller entrance at the end? You can even have an entrance on the face of the front of the hive. I designed mine with entrances all along the front that I can block or unblock as required. I even have a small entrance directly into the flow super.

Actually, we had a look yesterday and i extracted a whole comb totally capped, no brood in it, so i cut it in bits, which are now in containers, in the freezer. Have you heard of Les Crowder? he wrote Top-Bar Beekeeping, check him out on YouTube a wonderful man, he says you should pur the combs in the freezer just in case wax moth eggs tucked away, this kills them. As far as the entrance is concerned, we do have an opening further to the right but it’s proving difficult to actually open it up and i don’t think the bees would take kindly to having a drill put to their house! A small entrance to the Flow side would have been great. To be honest, i am paranoid about the SHB, so i didn’t want to have too large entrances, this way it’s easier for the bees to defend the hive.
I think i’ve looked all the way up and down the top bar forum, i don’t think i’ve seen any pictures of your hive?
It’s really exciting to see that quite a few people are trying our hybrid! :slight_smile:

Here’s a few of my hive:

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And here is another one a friend made using my main body type- he made his own roof and base:

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Very nice! What is the little box in the front of the hive? And do you have frames all the way down to the end? the bees will make wild comb, even if they have lots of other work to do! And: where do you live?

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Handy handles to carry the hive! But i see the wild comb! :grin: