So… My beekeeping adventure started due to a facebook advert for a new form of beehive that makes beekeeping super easy and follows the dream of being able to turn a key and run your honey straight out into the jars. I had for a long time been thinking about keeping bees and loved the idea of building my own bee hives but just never got round to it.
Previous Flow Frame Harvesting Methods
In the past I have tried to flow the flow frames in the hive. This turned into a bit of a mess with the bees coming around the back and swimming in the honey. Flowing into sieves and into pipes just made everything sticky and didn’t really solve the main problem which was that the frames leak a lot through the bottom into the hive. A few drips would be fine with the bees cleaning it up but I was seeing loads of honey that then flows out of the bottom of the hive onto the ground to attract ants and other animals.
Hybrid Flow Hives
I have about 20 flow frames and have found that swapping 2 flow frames out for 3 cut comb frames is ideal to making the flows spread further and getting some cut comb. obviously you could run flows on one hive and cut comb on another but this way the set-up is similar on all your hives and you can easier gauge which hive is performing better than another for choosing queens. I call these set-ups “Hybrids” as they are a hybrid between flow and cut comb.
Paradise Honey Hives for flow frames
My preferred hives are the paradise honey poly hives. These come in Langstroth size and can be easily modified to fit the flow frames. the issue with the flow frames is that they are slightly deeper on one end and in a normal unmodified hive they don’t sit nicely. So to modify the deep box into a flow super you need to follow the below:
- Remove the frame support plastic from one side of the box. front edge.
- Cut a square wedge of polystyrene from the lip so that the lip is lowered by 1 cm.
- With a sharp saw cut the plastic edge that needs to be lowered and glue this onto the newly created sill.
- This effectively lowers the leading edge of the hive by about 1 cm, allowing the flow frames to fit nicely.
Paradise Honey now do an all inclusive hone harvesting solution but I have not tried it myself.
Manufacturers of flow frames
So this section is going to make me unpopular… I am one of the original investors for the flow system and have lots of original flows but I also have 1 set of cheap Chinese frames!!! the difference in price was worth the attempt to see if they were any good. I’m ashamed to say that i cant tell the difference between them. except to say that they are a mm longer than the originals. this is a problem with the poly hives as they are really tight. I can therefore only use these frames in the wooden hives.
Current Flow Frame Harvesting Method
Harvesting away from the bees and over drip trays was the preferred method but the complexity of the setup led to issues so the method was simplified by extending the drip trays and using full size supers so that the frames hang down slightly into the drip tray.
So for what it is worth I now harvest my flow frames in a sort of hybrid setting. I take the supers off the bee hives, leaving the bees behind and transport the supers to a processing area. This is usually a properly cleaned surface in the kitchen. The frames are supported above large food grade plastic drip trays (properly sterilised) using clean wooden supers and the flow frames are activated. All the honey drips out into the drip trays.
The honey is then sieved through a stainless steel 200 micron sieve and stored in honey buckets ready for jarring. This is the best way to keep the honey beautifully clean without bees interfering and without the loss of half your product through the bottom of the flow frames into the hive. This method has proven to be reliable as after a few years of use the the flow frames leak considerable amounts of honey out the bottom of the frames that would end up on the floor under the hive if I harvested in the more traditional method inside the hive.
All being said I love the flow frame system. I just don’t find it works as well as in the videos.
Tips
- Make sure you have a really good Queen excluder as a queen laying in the top is a real pain.
- Don’t allow Oil seed rape to be brought back into the hive as it will clog your flow frames. If you are in an area with lots of OSR then put the supers on after the OSR has been harvested.
- Get your honey off before the Ivy flow starts in September. This too will clog your frames.