Just got a flow hive a few weeks ago. The introduced bees going crazy and quickly filling up the brood box. I got to thinking that I might want to add another brood box prior to setting the super with the flow frames on top. Do many of you do this, or do you generally run the flow hive with a single brood box?
Kind of depends where you are and what you want from the bees. Mine all live in a double brood box and make large hives. This gives them plenty of reserves so I rarely have to feed. The large hives can really drag in the honey when there is a flow on and are resistant to parasites like SHB.
Cheers
Rob.
It depends on location: For instance, I’m in NJ and run 3 brood boxes. If I were in say, South Dakota or some such place, I’d run 3 for sure.
I know here in mid Nebraska beeks do 2 Deeps for Brood or else I’ve heard of 3 or 4 mediums for Brood.
As people have said, it depends where you are. I’m in the Northern California Delta region, near the Bay Area. We put the flow hives on top of double brood box in March and had our first harvest two weeks ago. They were completely full and capped. We have hot hot summers and a mild winter last year, but our hive has always been productive. It’s just important to keep track of what’s going on in your hive. We had two and one swarmed right after harvest and the other (very aggressive) initiated a swarm two days ago. The second hive had nothing at all in the top box because in three months they had honeybound themselves in the lower box. If you have two or more brood boxes, all should be well if you checkerboard them periodically and place at least one brood frame in the same box as your flow frames (we have four flow frame and four regular deep frames in 10-frame Langstroth hives. That way we still get some wax. 
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