The harvest is over, and for me, using conventional methods, it was the best for several years. But the flow hive advocates haven’t posted anything since early July. Come on, this has been the season when we find out if they’re viable in the UK. Let’s hear how easy it was, how long it took, and what problems you encountered. It’s your experience that may convert the naysayers.
Our Flow Hive experience in Cornwall UK.
I have not posted to convert 'naysayers' just to share our experience.
We purchased a National NUC Cornish Black Bees for our Flow Hive.
Easy to adapt National Frames to Langstroth and slowly work them out.
We had honey the first season from the Flow Frames. To be honest we could not wait to do the harvest.
Being newbies we were watching everything everyday on our rooftop. In Summer they just kept building and building and we watched them slowly move up into the Flow Frames and do their job. We were impatient but the bees had to totally fill the Langstroth Brood Box first which is quite big for a little National NUC, who incidentally had quite a bit of waxmoth. It was absolutely fascinating for us to watch and we were very happy with our new bees and hive.
As the season was coming to an end they started to bring in the Ivy and being newbies we left the Flow Frames on and of course it crystalised. No problem we left it all there for the bees to winter on removed the Queen excluder in case they wanted to move up in a bunch to keep warm.
In spring we took off the Flow Frames with the remains of the Ivy. They did not use much as the colony contracted for winter and had stores around the edges of the brood frames. We then simply washed and soaked the flow frames with warm water and popped them back on. Lesson learned don't leave on for the Ivy unless you don't mind giving them a quick wash.
2nd year the colony was absolutely booming lots of Flow harvesting and beautiful honey. We loved everything about it. The bees did so well they swarmed twice one we caught the other got away.
As winter was approaching and the Ivy came into flower we harvested everything from the Flow Frames took them off and put a shallow on top for them to save their winter stores. We kept some honey from the Flow Frames and gave some back we would rather not give sugar syrup.
3rd year Winter had been bad our apiary was completely covered in snow and high winds had tipped over the hive. While it was snowing we quickly straightened it all up and did not inspect as it was too cold. I could not hear anything in the hive so had almost gave up on their survival.
Soon as the weather warmed up out came a couple of bees and as spring started we took off the shallow and Crystalised Ivy frames and popped on the Flow Frames again. They have waxed them up quickly and started the process off again. I think the OSR is not very close to us as we don't usually worry about it.
So our newbie experience has been very good we have also made plenty of mistakes.
From a bringing back the Black Bee perspective we now have three hives and one swarm gone back to nature. Our bees are healthy according to DEFRA this week and we have beautiful honey.
The reason we started with the Flow hives is we saw them in action in Australia and had friends who were doing well with them there. So we had a go and also wanted to do something for the Cornish Black Bee.
So all in all it has been a very positive experience for us.
We have had Plymouth Uni doing a MSc course examining our bees for Hygiene, Varroa management and any aggresiveness.
We had DEFRA checking them out and we had the people from Flow coming over to see how we were managing with our Flow Hive and Cornish Black Bee Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gx3eRhWMPg
Hope the feed back is of help to anyone.
