I was one that was told a December delivery. On the 17th they sent an email that tracking would follow in 72 hours. After an email back they told me that not all tracking was sent out, but did not answer if the frames were shipped. Still no answer back when I asked once more for tracking. Getting worried about this great deal. Anyone else having this problem?
Thanks Randy
Hi Randy,
I think you got unlucky. On December 17th, I read the following in an e-mail from the team:
- Just last week one of our injection moulding machines at our Brisbane factory burst a water line, the water leaked into the motor and burnt it out and the injection moulding tool got jammed in the machine. Yikes! It’s all fixed now though, and we’re creating new Flow Frames as quickly as we can.
- Many of us on the Flow team will be working through the Christmas-New Year period as much as we can to make sure that we flow smoothly into February-March.
- If you would like to review your account you can go to http://www.honeyflow.com/user/login and enter the email address used for your contribution or purchase. You can also update your phone number and current address (no PO Boxes please).
I would guess that factory incident resulted in a couple of weeks’ delay, but the support team are very responsive if you send them a message at http://www.honeyflow.com/contact/p/3
Dawn
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@goldfish Im there with you. my email came on Dec 19th, as of today i will have no tracking details. I have also sent a email to the team and im yet to get a reply there to. lets hope we get some news soon.
Keep in mind that they are processing 25,000 December orders and most of them are running late at this point. I’m sure the email volume is pretty outrageous right now. This isn’t a company with a customer service division with an army of representatives.
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@adagna, i agree, but when the email sent out says to expect a tracking number in 72 hours. I just think that people expect that time frame to be close at least, here we are almost 2 weeks later and still no email.
I did email customer service hopefully something will come back from that soon.
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I agree they should follow thorough with timelines if they put them in place. If I have any criticism I would say it has been communicating too much. They have gotten way more grief from trying to make sure everyone knows what the status of the process is, then if they would have just had boxes start showing up at door.
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I don’t know anyone who had a December delivery has got it…
I know that I have a “Partial” shipment coming from the US but what does that mean??
if its only a partial shipment and can’t use the hive then it may as well be NO SHIPMENT
I have emailed the team on thie Partial Shipment con note as it wasn’t working but they made no mention that I was only getting half a hive…
in the next day or two i’ll know I guess
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Hey Goldfish
I too got the identical email and when I checked my account it said waiting.
So last week when I was eagerly waiting (still) my account changed to queued??
And I thought it was being shipped, as the email stated.
I have 3 bursting beehives in brood boxes and 3 modified supers waiting (still) for the flow hive.
I bought and paid for them in March.
I received my hive a few days before Christmas, but no frames. (Purchased on Feb 22nd.). I didn’t get the email posted above regarding the injection molding machine issue, so I shot an email over to support. Will update if I hear back from them.
i live in Taiwan, my estimate shipping date is Dec 15th
and I just checked my shipping states, it shows not shipped.
It is 20 some days late then the scheduled time, I hope to hear some
status updates explain the issue that delayed the shippment.
I was hoping to receive my hive before chinese new year, which the date of this year
is feb 5th. Now the chance seem pretty small.
On another thread, the Flow team posted that December involved shipping around 25,000 hives. This is a big problem in logistics for any company, but even harder for a new startup company. I am sure that when they set the initial delivery dates, the Flow team had no idea how massive the order numbers would become! 
The hives are arriving all over the world, but it would very reasonable to expect some significant delays. The other thing to keep in mind is that the boxes are shipping from Oregon in the US, and the frames from Brisbane, Australia. You will get 2 separate shipments, and customs in Taiwan may hold up the shipment for inspection for a while too. It will be worth it in the end, I am sure!
Dawn
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I’m quite impressed with the delivery timing, unless it was just coincidental. I was part of the Dec delivery mob but didn’t really expect it on time considering how much shuts down over the xmas/New year break.
But my package of flow frames arrived yesterday from Brisbane which is a two hour flight away from here and the flow hive package arrived today from Oregon which is on other side of the planet…good timing or good luck, who cares…I’ve got my weekend job planned now.
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The partial shipment likely refers to the fact that the frames and the boxes are shipping separately. The boxes from the USA and the Frames (which as slightly delayed) will come from Australia. The boxes can be used without the flow frames esp if you are going to be using a nuc or package to start a new hive and not just placing Flows on an existing hive.
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yeah well, that’s the thing
I’ve been building up a brood box over the past couple of months to December and they are about ready to move up into the second box…
everything is on time apart from the Flowhive, although, I have a package at the postoffice to pick up today which may be the Flowhive Box which will be no good without the frames.
I have had no contact advising me of delays of the frames… so if I didn’t visit here i’d be non the wiser as to whats going on…
I contacted them over the freight issue but even then they didn’t tell me that there would be delays on the frames … so all very odd…
and speaking of odd… I find that all of their web pages are hard to use and to find information… I hope they aren’t paying anyone to do this
You may not want to do this, but one option would be to build your Flow super and buy some ordinary frames locally, preferably foundation less or unwired. Put the traditional frames in the hive to give the bees storage space. When your Flow frames arrive, you could take the normal frames out, and use the crush and strain method to get the honey from any capped cells:
Or just enjoy cut comb if you like it. I know it isn’t ideal, but at least your bees won’t be honey-bound in the brood box.
Dawn
Edit: Just realized, you already have an extractor, so you know all this stuff. Sorry!
Dawn, While i understand that 25,000 hives is a big number, there is only one group who is responsible for the size of the December group. The flow team had full control of how many perks they were offering, they have full control of emails that are distributed with comments about expecting another email with tracking in 72 hours. Seems the flow team bit off a little more than they can chew, and they did it multiple times.
There is a saying, and it is especially important to start up companies, better to under promise and over deliver. Perhaps if they had only promised 10,000 hives for delivery in December, then if they get done early they could start delivering for the next batch and make those people happy. I would have preferred to know i had to wait 12 months and then receive the frames in 9 or 10 than to be promised 9 and be waiting 10 or 11 (just an example not actual figures there). Now sure some people are not going to care that they were promised 12 months and receive it in 9, but i bet people care about being promised 9 and not meeting that time frame.
All im saying is that honestly every start up is going to have hiccups and bumps in the road, but it appears not only did the flow team not account for those in their planning but they also over extended themselves, many times. Unfortunately while people want to point the finger at DHL and the injection molding machine and this and that, ultimately there is no one else they should be looking at beyond themselves. It ultimately comes down to a lack of effective planning.
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Look I was told last on the 3rd of January that my order was in fact boxed and ready to ship, and that it should be going out the door early in January. And at that time we would receive tracking. So my only thought now is, what is “early” January? My guess is sometime before the middle, so I’ll wait a month from when the first email came in telling us tracking would soon follow. No worries"" right?
So did you ever get tracking they were coming?
@goldfish, no still no tracking number as of this morning, still saying Queued on the order page. New years eve I emailed them asking what was up and got a canned response (same as many others here have gotten), replied back to that response with further questions and have yet to receive a reply or tracking number.
Yes I did. I just re read my post and I hope it wasn’t misread…what I meant by impressed was the timing between the arrival of the two packages, one from Australia and the other from US and only a day apart.
But getting back to the advisory emails etc, I was sent two emails indicating that my purchase was in the queue, I cant recall the exact words, but I was expecting it in mid Dec but it didn’t surprise me of that extended because of the Xmas/New year break.
I checked the status regularly on my purchase account in honeyflow and one day the tracking number appeared as a link and that then took me to the DHL website where I could track it. Somewhere along the line I also got notification of the separate package of frames come via Australia Post from Brisbane and I could track it also.
All in all, even though mine arrived a couple of weeks later than I was originally advised, I don’t have an issue with it purely because of Xmas.
On a different note, having just finished putting it together, I’m very disappointed in the quality of the workmanship with the dovetailing…I had to use a wood chisel and sandpaper to make things fit…I’ve seen better quality machining on mass produced chinese furniture from AMart.
I haven’t read any other posts about ill fitting dovetails so maybe mine was made on Friday arvo or Monday morning! If it was a local buy I would have returned it for an exchange.
I’ve also bought one of the Australian made pine units and I’m keen to see if that is better quality workmanship when it finally arrives in a month or two.