Dark magic is afoot here, lads!
As a beekeeper Iâm rather skeptical of this. I didnât submit for more information.
Normally an excess of honey around a hive will promote robbing (stronger hive stealing from a weaker one). It also attracts ofter pests and predators.
That said it would be nice to see an easier collection system for backyard keepers.
1 Like
Youâre right. I found it really strange that no bees were coming around the colony to pick it up. The timelapse seemed to have been for quite a bit.
Personally Iâm more of a fan of top bar hives. Warreâs and trough styles.
I worked with Langstrothâs for a season and I didnât like them very much.
Iâm curious but not biting either. I would personally like to see their patents.
They have an FAQ up.
Looks like itâs just a specialized frame.
I read through the FAQ and still remain skeptical. The system works by splitting the frames and allowing the honey to ooze out, then waiting on the bees to uncap the empty cells and refill them with honey. I see several problems with this approach:
The first is when to tap the frame for the honey? Bees cap the cells when the moisture content of the honey is below 20% water content above this point will increase the chances the honey will ferment. I inspect the honey frames in my hives and when the frame is 80% or greater capped I harvest that frame. With this system you still have to inspect the frames to know when to harvest.
The second is when will the bees discover the empty cells and refill them? Bees normally only uncap a honey cell when they need the food. During the spring and summer the bees are busy gathering nectar and pollen and I doubt that they spend much time checking to see if the honey they stored last week is still there.
Another âLooks good on Paperâ idea but not so great in the working phase.
Iâm learning so much about bees this week because of this thread. Awesomepants.
1 Like
Those are legitimate questions.
I think that this is why in all of the hives weâve seen in the demo vids have observation windows. To try and monitor things.
The biggest issues I see with it would be first, how expensive are these frames going to be compared to traditional foundation combs(weâre not even going to talk about the silly simple top bar methods where itâs just slats of woodâŚ) and second, if itâs so fancy how prone would it be to failure in the long run. What sorts of maintenance are you going to need?
Iâve had to clean and repair frames in the off season. Propolis wrecks the traditional ones. I canât imagine whatâd happen with this setup.
Nevertheless, however it works, it does appear that in the video it is doing what they claim. Iâd try it just for giggles, especially if it can go in a trough style top bar. No extractor is kinda cool.
1 Like
I am assuming the cells are pre-drawn to allow for the special plumbing that will drain the cells. There have been other attempts to create plastic pre-drawn cells, but they have poor acceptance by the bees. Plasticell foundation, especially if wax coated, is accepted OK, but not full-depth cells of plastic.
This would require: special frames (or a cartridge of frames that filled a super), and a special super with a side-access door to allow the attachment of the pipe to pull the honey.
Iâm sceptical: sounds pricy and likely ineffective.
Iâm not concerned about robbing - that can be handled via an appropriate receptacle to hold the captured honey.
Best market: very small scale beekeepers (in the two hive range), who want to experiment and who might not have the honey processing equipment (centrifuges and the like) for traditional honey extraction.
Here is the patent
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20140370781.pdf
Pretty ingenious. Cells become split and honey flows from top to bottom. Cells are angled a bit. Normally they would be built horizontally, but the bees apparently accept them as they are. Must take a great deal of force to split and it looks like some cams and levers do the work. I suppose the broken caps on the cells is a clue that something is wrong and the cells are reopened and refilled eventually.
There are lots of arguments why it wonât work, but one thing is for sure, there will be thousands of user reviews in about a year so letâs see what happens.
One observation from the youtube ad - makes it look like you just add bees and wait. Potential beekeepers need to realize that they may never get to the harvesting stage of bee keeping whether they have this or a standard hive. Itâs not nearly as simple as add bees and wait. There are pests - mites and moths, concern for winter food supply, supplemental feeding, etc.
Dig deep into your pocketâŚ
Actually, when bees draw out foundation, they DO angle the cells slightly upwards, around 9 to 14 degrees - just enough to keep the honey from flowing out.
1 Like
I have never kept bees and am wanting to have a hive or two eventually when my ecovillage is going. This seems like a good way to harvest honey without disturbing the bees, if there is ever âextraâ honey. I do realize that it is still a good bit of work to keep bees, but if the Flow Hive works and costs less than a centrifuge I am willing to give it a go. I did not think that $300 was all that much for frames to fill an 8 frame Langstroth, plus I am figuring that if I build a 10 frame I could just add regular frames for the bees to use that I wouldnât harvest, but I will look into all of this when my flow hive arrives this fall.
I have a 4 frame centrifuge I can bring to the Space if anyone want to harvest their honey.
If youâre wanting to get into beekeeping now is the time to start. You can buy bees online;
R Weaver http://www.rweaver.com and B Weaver http://www.beeweaver.com/ are Texas based apiaries and are taking orders now. A box with 4 frames, Bees and a Queen (called a Nuc) cost $225. Or you can buy Packaged Bees, 3 pounds of bees and a Queen start at $125. You can get bees from a local keeper if you find one selling bees, or you can catch a wild swarm.
The basic stuff you will need is a Bee suit and gloves, a Smoker and a Hive to keep your bees in. You can build your own hive, not very difficult, or you can buy one and assemble it.
Dadant www.dadant.com and Mann Lake www.mannlakeltd.com are two of the many suppliers of bee equipment.
If anyone wants the get together and discuss starting out we can set up a time a date.
Note that on a strong hive, you might have 2 or 3 supers on top of the brood boxes to capture the honey flow. In addition, even for a hobby beekeeper Iâd recommend at least two hives, and four hives for a backyard beeyard is a good amount. Thus, youâd potentially be looking at $300 X 4. The costs add up quickly which is why I said earlier it only makes sense for a hobbyist.
Why 2+ hives you ask? As a hobby/novice beekeeper, having 2+ hives is invaluable:
- you can have a comparison to gauge how your hive is doing (better or worse than the other(s)? )
- having a backup hive allows you to recover from the loss of a queen by
- borrowing uncapped brood from another hive and allowing them to raise an emergency queen
- merging the queenless hive with a queenright hive to avoid losing the workers - you can balance the hive strength by boosting a weak hive with brood from a strong hive
- you can rebalance hives by swapping a strong and weak hive while the workers are out flying. Theyâll return to a different hive (with nectar) and rebalance the foraging bee populations between the hives.
- if you do happen to lose a hive, esp. overwinter, you are not completely lost and can perhaps salvage some of the old hive (unused stores, drawn out frames, etc.) by merging (depending on WHY the old hive died out).
All of these can only be accomplished if you have a second hive (or hives) available. For beginners, the first reason is the strongest.
There is a very strong hobbyist beekeeping group (Collin County Hobby Beekeepers) that meet monthly in McKinney: http://cchba.org/about/location/
They are a wonderful resource for beginners. They have a beechat that starts 30 min before the meeting for hobbyists to learn, ask questions, etc. They have an exceptional mentoring program for kids from non-beekeeping families, but that has already started for 2015 - keep it in mind for NEXT year if your kids have any interest in bees.
FWIW, Dadant has a store in Paris, TX. If you order from them, donât pay extra for shipping: most things arrive in Dallas in 1 day anyway.
Did not know that! (cell angle),
(oops I think I was responding to a PM that you did not see. HankCowdog related the fact that the cell are normally at an angle so that the nectar / honey does not flow out.)
But it totally makes sense.
We had backyard hives for about 2 years in Dallas. Built them up to 5 boxes high with the top two queen-excluded for honey then one winter / spring bees were gone and moths and bugs had taken over 
So disappointing but would like to try again some day. We probably did not attend to them enough over the winter although we had an internal top feeder with sugar, bee protein bars and bee-vitamins, etc. Bees may be low maintenance but they are not no-maintenance as we discovered.
Could be a good DMS project but not sure where we would put a hive. I understand the rooftop is not available. Have seen some folks put hives inside with a tunnel to the outside. I think the old Dallas Science place or somewhere like it had this going on with some Lexan construction on the inside to view the hive.
This is an excellent idea for a backyard enthusiast. I had 4 backyard hives, 20 field hives and 200 commercial hives that I was in charge of.
I agree with anyone starting out having at least 4 hives (they are rather cheap to make if you have a wood shop). With regard to the number of supers one needs, that is dependant upon how strong your hives become. My backyard hives were 2 supers and in summer at night the bees were several inches thick covering the front of the hives as well as being full inside. Not an issue and they died off in the fall anyway. I got over 200Lbs per hive some years!.
The fact that you could easily harvest several times a year and have only one super would be great, The only reason I used 2 supers was to contain honey for Jan 1 harvest every year (california is warm enough and cleaning the honey makes the queen begin to lay immediaty as if a honey flow).
Remember that you will still have to open your hives especially in the spring and either kill or transplant your queen cells to starter hives ( a teacup of bees in a mini hive with a feeder) to keep your bees from absconding with the old queen. It is amazing but you will find that you miss a queen cell on occasion and that your hive splits.
I never paid for bees, I put out notices in craigâs list to remove bees, especially those that just appeared. For novices, placing a cardboard box under the limb and just thumping the limb really hard will drop all the bees and the queen into the box (never try this on bees that have built honeycomb, they will protect the hive). I obtained most of my bees from recovering splits like this. They are common where one has a lot of hives anyway, just keep your eyes open. Do not attempt to remove bees that are inside a structure like a wallâŚtell the person you dont remove old hives, ever!
One of the most amazing things to do is be inside a new swarm as they move to the place they have chosen to alightâŚthousands and thousands of bees flying around in a giant swarm about 50-150 feet across. They wont sting you unless on accident (nothing to protect)! So cool to be in that swarm. It is all so cool unitl one develops alergy to bee venomâŚ
1 Like
Yes, until I had bees, I sort of classified all flying and stinging insects (bees, wasps, hornets) the same. The honey bee sting is not so bad and not really that venomous. Foraging or swarming bees pretty much wonât sting - there is nothing to gain. The bee does not survive the sting, so it must be protecting something and serious about trying to sting you.