Flow Hives - Honey

[Mardoo]

Was going to wobbly but my wife now has got it in her head that it could be dangerous with the kids, subscribe to their emails and am presently trying to convince my wife to let me put the hive on the roof.

I was a registered beekeeper from age 9-15. It's not dangerous for kids, unless yours happen to be particularly stupid. Which I doubt.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Mardoo you wouldn't believe the discussions we have had about this, if I wanted to keep wasps and harvest the grubs for fishing I could understand, wasps I have had plenty of stings from, bees none.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Advice.. wait 2-3 years and collect them from hard rubbish.. reported issues with comb sizes so far and the bees don't really like them cause of it.

Depends where that information comes from, I have read quite a bit about it and that traditional apiarists are against the flow hive where others are for them, I suppose its a bit like our brewing web sites the differences of opinions, shall I rack or not, shall I re hydrate yeast or not.

 

[mash head]

As someone who has worked with and managed a few hundred hives, I think the problems with these are people percieve that they will be able to walk up to their hive and just turn a tap on with out actually managing the be population.
The old school way of removing full boxes and replacing them with empty ones means you have to open up the hive which gives you a good idea on the colonies health. The full boxes can then be placed in a warming room to ensure the viscosity of the honey is adequate for extraction. Most of Wobblys points were spot on.

 

[Grainer]

Depends where that information comes from, I have read quite a bit about it and that traditional apiarists are against the flow hive where others are for them, I suppose its a bit like our brewing web sites the differences of opinions, shall I rack or not, shall I re hydrate yeast or not.

Reports from someone that I know that owns both styles of hives is the flow hive performs much less and is is suspected it s due to the smaller octagon sizes of the flow hives.. this looks to be a flaw in the design. There have been numerous reports of this. The guy at Collingwood children farm reports the same things and he is very experienced.

 

[mash head]

Reports from someone that I know that owns both styles of hives is the flow hive performs much less and is is suspected it s due to the smaller octagon sizes of the flow hives.. this looks to be a flaw in the design. There have been numerous reports of this. The guy at Collingwood children farm reports the same things and he is very experienced.

It would depend wether you twist the right frame, twist the wrong one and you may wipe out a bunch of young brood destroying future productivity. Also this system doesn't take into account the bees also store pollen in some combs.
Obviously I don't think its a great invention, but people who don't know much are silly enough to invest.

 

[Mardoo]

Mardoo you wouldn't believe the discussions we have had about this, if I wanted to keep wasps and harvest the grubs for fishing I could understand, wasps I have had plenty of stings from, bees none.

Humans and bees have lived together for a very, very long time. If it was that dangerous, we wouldn't be spending any time on fluffy cat memes.

 

[Crusty]

I've been toying with the idea of having a single hive at home for quite some time & initially, the Flow Hive looked the part for my situation.
A guy just around the corner from me has a 10 frame hive in his back yard & he looked at getting one but he mentioned the design flaw with the size of the Flow Hive.
In some you tube videos, there's a fair percentage of bees that prefer the standard hive to one of these & some common complaints are the rather slow speed that the bees start to make the honey. They seem to spend quite some time waxing up any gaps in the hive & this also includes the plastic comb. The cost is another factor too & if I get a hive, I think I'm just going to get a 10 frame starter kit from The Urban Beehive
$100 - $150 for a nucleus, some protective gear & away you go. The wife likes the idea too so the transition should be quite easy with no squabbling.
You can buy a shit load of honey for the cost of setting up a hive up but it's not about that for me. I want to grow as much of my own produce as possible too & get back to basics a bit more & bees are definitely on the radar.

 

[mash head]

Bees don't like plastic, its clear to me when you look through a brood box and the queen is laying only on the natural foundation and avoiding the plastic frames. Plastic foundation and frames have been around a fair while now it easier to assemble and they don't fly apart in the extractor but if the bees don't like to use them what is gained.

 

[razzmeister]

I ended up buying one of these a few months ago, purely out of curiosity really. (Also they ran a bit of a special and they were a little bit cheaper)
I have heard the negatives and I probably agree with most of them, but I will see what happens anyway.
I have quite a few existing hives and have been keeping bees for a few years now so I'd like to think that while I'm by no means any sort of expert,
I'm not a complete noob when it comes to bees!! Obviously knowing the cost of 'normal' gear I was initially very put off by the cost of these hives, but couldn't resist trying one out.

Will be setting the super up on top of an existing hive that will be starting to store honey pretty much straight away so I'll see how it goes!
Should be able to see pretty quickly whether the bees are going to work the frames or not.

I did have a bit of a discussion with another beekeeper a while back about this and we came up with a bit of another theory why the bees may not like it...
It's possible that in the Byron bay area where these were invented the plastic stays warm enough that the bees can still communicate through it with vibrations etc.
But that down here in Melbourne and in other locations with different weather, the bees cannot do this so will therefore avoid the plastic frames. Just a thought.

Anyway I'll post some observations for you guys as the season starts to get going and let you know if I manage to get any honey out of it.

 

[Crusty]

I ended up buying one of these a few months ago, purely out of curiosity really. (Also they ran a bit of a special and they were a little bit cheaper)
I have heard the negatives and I probably agree with most of them, but I will see what happens anyway.
I have quite a few existing hives and have been keeping bees for a few years now so I'd like to think that while I'm by no means any sort of expert,
I'm not a complete noob when it comes to bees!! Obviously knowing the cost of 'normal' gear I was initially very put off by the cost of these hives, but couldn't resist trying one out.

Will be setting the super up on top of an existing hive that will be starting to store honey pretty much straight away so I'll see how it goes!
Should be able to see pretty quickly whether the bees are going to work the frames or not.

I did have a bit of a discussion with another beekeeper a while back about this and we came up with a bit of another theory why the bees may not like it...
It's possible that in the Byron bay area where these were invented the plastic stays warm enough that the bees can still communicate through it with vibrations etc.
But that down here in Melbourne and in other locations with different weather, the bees cannot do this so will therefore avoid the plastic frames. Just a thought.

Anyway I'll post some observations for you guys as the season starts to get going and let you know if I manage to get any honey out of it.

Awesome mate.
Let us know how it goes, positives & negatives. I love the idea & for the budding bee keeper, they look a little easier to manage with honey extraction.
I dropped in to see Adam up the road again this morning & his bees are going really well. It's a perfect time of the year & the bees are in full activity. At the moment, he only has the two box set up with another box ready to add. I asked him how much you would get from just one box & he stated that at least 20kg & up to 30kg with a 10 frame box. He only harvests once a year but said you could push a couple of extractions if it's a bumper season. All good with the council too, we're allowed to have one hive. I think I'm going to order a starter kit shortly.

 

[Crusty]

I've heard that the honey from the flow hive is richer in flavour as in more honeycomb like compared to honey from the standard hive.
Apparently, when you spin the frames, it subjects the honey to some oxidation where as the flow hive honey isn't subject to that in any way.
Not too sure if it's just jibber but I remember hearing that somewhere.

 

[wynnum1]

I've heard that the honey from the flow hive is richer in flavour as in more honeycomb like compared to honey from the standard hive.
Apparently, when you spin the frames, it subjects the honey to some oxidation where as the flow hive honey isn't subject to that in any way.
Not too sure if it's just jibber but I remember hearing that somewhere.

Lots of the honey sold in Australia is poor quality probably not honey they feed the bees .

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Another plus with the bees besides the honey, when working in a garden with the drone of the bees really helps connect with nature, and its relaxing.

 

[Crusty]

Lots of the honey sold in Australia is poor quality probably not honey they feed the bees .

Yep! We all hate Capilano.

Another plus with the bees besides the honey, when working in a garden with the drone of the bees really helps connect with nature, and its relaxing.

Just what I need for the garden.

 

[shaunous]

I'm keen for a bee hive in my garden. I've been putting down failing crops of vege's with plenty of flowers and buggerall fruit to hardly any bee activity.
Let me know which way you go crusty. I nearly pulled the trigger on a flow hive so many times but kept talking myself out of it for the cost.
If your mate is only harvesting once a year that's alright, I figured you'd have to be more active then that.
We have hives on our property up the mountain, but they come and go and we never see them, they just leave 1kg buckets of honey on the mailbox as payment

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Why not get your own normal hive.

They are not that expensive.

Getting the honey out without an extractor is the difficult bit

 

[mash head]

Razmiester, we coat plastic frames with melted beeswax which helps them accept them, not sure if this would be practical for the flow hive but its something the bees will do naturally anyway.

 

[Crusty]

I'm keen for a bee hive in my garden. I've been putting down failing crops of vege's with plenty of flowers and buggerall fruit to hardly any bee activity.
Let me know which way you go crusty. I nearly pulled the trigger on a flow hive so many times but kept talking myself out of it for the cost.
If your mate is only harvesting once a year that's alright, I figured you'd have to be more active then that.
We have hives on our property up the mountain, but they come and go and we never see them, they just leave 1kg buckets of honey on the mailbox as payment

He said you can harvest more than once a year but he doesn't do it.
He attends the hive bi-weekly or sometimes weekly just to check on them.
His hive is a full size 10 frame with the brood box on the bottom, the frames are 80% filled so he's added another brood box on top. He said once that's 80% done, he's going to add a queen excluder then his 10 frame box that he'll harvest from. He said doing it this way with a double brood box gives the bees more than enough honey for Winter & he still gets 20kg+ from that top box. His bees are really cool & so docile. I scored a 1kg jar of honey from him yesterday & it's superb. You can really taste the floral flavour & it shits all over anything you get from the shops. We're living with my step father at the moment which is a bit hard to put a hive in his yard mainly due to orientation of the yard, but we'll see. I'm going to go with the commercial size hive, 10 frame when I do get round to getting one.

 

[shaunous]

That's the plan. I know fuckall about bee's and looking after them. Main reason I haven't done anything yet.

Why not get your own normal hive.

They are not that expensive.

Getting the honey out without an extractor is the difficult bit