Flow Hive

In this section I will be loading up pictures of my own Flow hive as I progress with the bees through set up and inspection of Brood. watch the you tube links to see the construction of the kit and an inspection of the brood and Flow frames by the creator of the flow frames, also included will be an American Amateur Bee keeper and all of the success and failure of his Flow Hive from the initial introduction of his Bees some of the things he does however do not apply to our conditions here in Australia in particular Qld.

My brood has been growing over the last 8 weeks since first acquiring my Queen less swarm of Italian bees. It has been an amazing journey where the swarm with 2 frames of brood created their own emergency queen cells when the bees realised the old queens Pheromone no longer existed in the hive.

I inspected the hive to check for activity and that was when I first noticed these cells, with a quick reference to books and reassurance from members of the club, we were delighted to discover new worker brood cells on the frames a couple of weeks later, I was very close to making a call to a queen breeder. Since then the queen has been extremely productive and regular inspections has taught me a lot about the development of the colony. In this time I have also fitted a beetle trap and the honey flow has really begun in Ernest. 2 weeks ago when the bees were beginning to bubble out of the brood box I decided to add the Flow Super above the Queen excluder, particularly with the Flow system it is important to keep the Queen in the Brood box, however in the next week I am looking at expanding the Brood to a second box to help prevent swarming and to strengthen the colony, to encourage the bees into the flow I was advised to flush the frames with Rain water and dry well then spray a 1:1 ratio of Sugar syrup, this encouraged quite a lot of activity into the super flow frames and the Workers have already Put Propolis into the flow frames and built out with wax and begun filling with nectar. With the speed of activity I expect to have honey flowing within the next 3 weeks, I will be placing more videos up of the activity in the hive and observations as we continue to do the hive inspections on a regular basis to ensure the health of the bees and check for any sign of disease within the colony.