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  • flow hives

  • Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
 #11398  by Willgra1
 06 Jul 2021, 12:43
dos anyone have anything to tell me about flow hives, I want bees for the bees not necessarily the honey and this system looks like a good way to have a less involved bee keeping experience
 #11399  by SimnFishr
 06 Jul 2021, 17:51
I don’t have any first hand experience but I’d be wary if there’s any OSR nearby! I can’t imagine they work well with quickly granulating honey.
 #11400  by Patrick
 06 Jul 2021, 19:39
Hi Wilgra1

I was once told never recommend which bee hive is best or direct anyone reverse parking a car towing a caravan.

However...we had a Flow Hive at our divisional apiary. It seemed to have issues with repeated swarming by its residents. I suspect down to congestion issues with a single "super" mechanism. It also has internal workings which require bespoke tools and management with which most beekeepers are unfamiliar. For me, it seems a complicated and expensive solution for a relatively simple single beekeeping task - that of taking off honey - which using conventional methods and only a couple of hives, would be a simple job of an afternoon once or twice a year and no big deal.

The rest of the beekeeping tasks, weekly inspections to prevent swarming, swarm control, checking for food, laying space for the queen, being queen-right, disease, treating for varroa, feeding for winter etc - all that still needs to happen. So I wouldn't personally consider it delivers low intervention beekeeping. For me, its the equivalent of electronic handbrake in cars - an expensive trouble prone engineering solution to a problem I never actually had (of just pulling up the brake lever when i stopped!).

I would suggest that low intervention beekeeping can be done with conventional kit just as easily but we should be realistic as to how low your intervention can be without causing problems for your bees and neighbours. Unfortunately, not intending to take honey does not mean you can just leave them to it any more than not intending to eat lamb means you can put sheep in a field. close the gate and walk away.

Its quite possible to keep bees conventionally without taking off any honey whatsoever- lots of beekeepers do it year after year :lol: :lol:
 #11403  by Alfred
 07 Jul 2021, 09:10
Grisly old new beekeeper contribution.
Apologies in advance if its misdirected or simply not what you wanted to hear.

Why do you want to keep bees?
Not for honey?
Apparently not for the enjoyment of keeping bees?
Is it to to 'Save The Bees' then?
Have you been listening a bit too much to Zoe Ball breakfast show-they really dont have much insight on there-its well meaning but a bit of a cute fairy story for the masses.


Honey bees are ,at the moment, the poster girls and doing comparatively just fine due to their fantastic PR.
It other types of pollinators that are in big trouble, for example three of the dozen or so types of bumblebees are already extinct with at least half the remainder critically endangered.
Let your garden grow wilder, make some bug hotels and put in a wildlife pond if you want to help out.



Once you start keeping wild creatures in captivity you take on full responsibility for their well being and its then that the simplicity of the equipment pays off
Stick to proven 150 yr old technology if you are going to do this.
 #11404  by AdamD
 07 Jul 2021, 09:50
I have not used a Flow Hive and was intrigued by them when I first saw them. The process was crowd-funded and was over-subscribed enoumously. However I have not seen much praise for them here in the UK and a lot of "better try another year" so I would not be raving about getting one myself. The time to put on a flow hive super would be - for me - about now; after the OSR has been removed from the hive and to obtain blackberry honey and take that off before the ivy comes along.

Yes, you do need to know what you are doing with bees. If you go to a local association for lessons, they will possibly be very anti-anything-that's-new-or-different, so you may have to counter that. However managing bees with a traditional hive get-up does work and can be low-impact.

Another point to note is that the hive type (Langstroth) is different to what most people use in the UK. It's not a major problem but something to be aware of - more like using (better) Betamax compared to the more common VHS if you go back that far.
In summary, if you have not done so yet, perhaps go to some taster sessions or enroll on a course and then decide? You can of course have a hive or two without the flow hive bit on the top and add it later. (Advice and opinions always given here, of course).

(Note OSR (Oil Seed Rape) honey sets in the comb very quickly. Many experienced and less experienced beekeepers are caught out by it. It sets rock hard in the frames and therefore impossible to get out without melting the wax. If it got into the flowhive mechanism, I don't know what the procedure would be to remove it as cranking the handle to get the honey would certainly break the thing).
 #11411  by NigelP
 09 Jul 2021, 17:33
Willgra1 wrote:
06 Jul 2021, 12:43
dos anyone have anything to tell me about flow hives, I want bees for the bees not necessarily the honey and this system looks like a good way to have a less involved bee keeping experience
I'm sorry to deflate your thoughts but if you want to keep good heathy bees in prime condition then you need major involvement and input from you (their beekeeper) to maintain their welfare. The manufacturers of the flow hive suggest that all you need to do is add bees and turn on the tap.
If it was that simple we would all be doing it .......and that is putting it politely.
I'd join your local association get some hands on experience using "standard" methods that really work and have withstood the test of time; rather than compromise the health and welfare of your bees using (to me at least) laughable inventions like the flow hive.
 #11440  by Pip
 13 Jul 2021, 17:29
I bought a Flow national super. The bees fill it up and take it out again. That is very interesting to watch. But It is difficult to see when most cells are capped through the windows. My bees bring in and throw around buckets of propolis .
Last year I took about 12 kg of lovely clean honey straight into big jars. Enormously easier than the traditional method and much cleaner honey.
However it cost a LOT and I am not yet convinced they are worthwhile for the fickle UK climate . Maybe I will get more honey this year? Unlikely as I didn't catch the swarm and had to build up from queen cells again.
 #11448  by Patrick
 14 Jul 2021, 09:19
Interesting to hear your experience Pip. You make a good point about weather and season differences between UK and elsewhere. We tend to only extract once or twice a year in a three to six month window, other places will have much longer seasons.

It is expensive but then again if you only had one or two not impossibly so. If I decided to use it on all my hives it would be prohibitive but to use it on only some would be be daft.

Maybe that’s the nub of it. If you don’t have economies of scale in extraction, then not going through the faff for maybe two supers worth could be an attractive option.