Thread: Beekeeping

Originally Posted by 32t

I have read about these flow hives before and thought they were more of a gimmick.

It will be interesting to hear your thoughts after a couple more uses.

...Tim

Honestly don't know - they certainly were more costly than a normal setup. I'm afraid I am new to bee husbandry so I won't have too many useful thoughts in terms of comparisons. The ones I have are a plastic (or nylon?) frame with pre-made plastic/nylon uncapped honeycombs split vertically down the middle - the bees just fill them and cap them. When you insert the "key" and turn it, it splits the frame in half vertically (one half slides upwards from the other half by a small amount), which cracks the seal on the fake honey cells and allows the honey to flow out to a hole in the bottom of the box.

Seemed to me at the time of setup to be a whole lot easier and less stressful on the bees than what was described to me by the bee guy as being the traditional approach to collecting the honey.

I guess the thing will be how long they last/work as intended before needing to be replaced. Hopefully a long time - they aint cheap.

James.

Certain types of honey crystallize in the comb very easily. What would happen with these if the honey crystallizes?

Propylis or what I call bee glue. One little dot of that may keep the whole flexing thing from happening.

Just a couple of thoughts I have had.

Tim

Originally Posted by 32t

Certain types of honey crystallize in the comb very easily. What would happen with these if the honey crystallizes?

Propylis or what I call bee glue. One little dot of that may keep the whole flexing thing from happening.

Just a couple of thoughts I have had.

Tim

Ah I see. Yeah, it was a little stiff the first time we did it in fact, but I used two keys for leverage and stability (guy recommended doing it that way) and went gently and it opened OK. Apparently you can run into trouble with cracking them if you go at it hard. So yes, that is definitely something to be aware of in the future for sure.

James.