The Flow™ Hive: 20 Questions : 31
16 Sometimes a queen excluder develops a fault or a small queen can squeeze through the gap. What happens if she lays brood in the Flow frames?
Honey being extracted from a Flow Hive
11 If you mix Flow Frames and ordinary frames in a super, do you extract the latter in the usual way using an extractor?
‘Yes, if you plan to harvest honey from your conventional frames. We’d recommend leaving those ones for winter bee feed, and harvesting only from the Flow frames.’ 12 A lot of oilseed rape (canola) is grown in the UK. This is prone to granulate in the comb. What happens if this occurs in the Flow frame?
‘We’ve not had specific experience ourselves with canola. However, we have had honey crystallise. We found that if we tried to operate a crystallised Flow frame it would crack a little, the bees would notice the breaks and would go about consuming the crystallised honey and replace it with honey that was more fluid.’ 13 Likewise, a number of beekeepers take their bees to the ling heather moors. Ling produces a thixotropic honey. Will this run out of the Flow frame?
‘We have found we can extract thixotropic honey (Jellybush) by repeatedly opening and closing the Flow mechanism. We can’t guarantee that this will work with all honeys though. We are really interested in your experience with such important honey.’
May 2015 Vol 97 No 5
14 If a frame has a proportion of uncapped cells, to test whether it is ready to extract, we would shake it horizontally over the hive to see if any unripe honey falls from the cells. How can you ensure that the honey in the Flow frame is ripe and ready for extraction?
‘The end-view does give a fairly good picture of what the rest of the frame is like regarding being capped and full with ripe honey. Beekeepers can pull out the Flow frames to make certain that what they are seeing on the edge is what is happening all over the frame. We wait until all the cells are capped, then we know for sure the honey is ripe and ready to harvest.’ 15 If you can only see the cells at the ends of the frame, how do you know that the rest of the comb has been filled, capped and is ready to extract? ‘Sometimes the bees leave a half-circle of un-filled, uncapped cells in the bottom-centre of the Flow comb. This hasn’t mattered (except in volume of honey harvested) because these cells have no honey. We have found that if the end cells are full and capped this indicates that every other cell in the frame is either empty or full and capped as well.’
‘We have not used a queen excluder on most of our experimental hives just to see what happens. We have had drone brood being laid in the Flow frames in very small quantities, and never worker brood. When Flow frames with a little drone brood are harvested we have found the larvae do survive – they are not squashed and the honey flows past and over them to the collection trough.’ 17 How are the Flow frames cleaned at the end of the season so that no residual honey granulates in them?
‘The lower channel in the Flow frames can be easily washed out by squirting warm water up it and using a bottle brush if necessary. The bees will keep the rest clean. If you remove the super for winter storage then the same rules apply. Keep the frames in a sealed container and give them a light rinse with warm water at the beginning of the season.’ 18 Some bees are very prone to coat everything with propolis. Does this affect the mechanism of the Flow frame?
‘Bees do glue up and seal various parts of their hive with
propolis, but never put it in the wax honeycomb itself. The mechanism of the Flow frames is deep within the hexagonal wax honeycomb and therefore the bees do not try to glue it up.’ 19 Small hive beetle will make a real mess of super combs. How can you prevent this happening to the Flow frames?
‘Small hive beetles will make a mess of supers and broods. It’s a problem no matter what you have. An important part of beekeeping is keeping the colony healthy, so controlling beetles and other pests is just as important as with a regular hive. But the beetles will find Flow frames more difficult because they can’t chew through the plastic like they can with all-wax combs.’ 20 If I use Flow frames does that mean that I do not have to do anything else to my bees except run off the honey?
‘No. We’ve always stressed that Flow Hives or any other hive should be checked regularly for pests, disease and anything else that might upset the colony, and that people who are new to beekeeping need to learn how to take care of their bees. The Flow Hive simply addresses the expense, mess and effort associated with the honey- harvesting process.’ ♠ [For more information on Flow technology, visit
www.honeyflow.com]
Opening the door to inspect the ends of the Flow frames
www.bee-craft.com
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