Get the contact approved by the Board, then request a meeting with the Director of Parks and Recreation. Carry a list of “Talking Points” with you to the meeting, promoting the project as a natural way to improve pollinization of local parks and nearby citizens properties, fight colony collapse disorder, teach about Bees, etc etc.
I’ll be happy to commit time running the CNC router to make hives, and after I finish moving, I might be willing to do CNC designs as well.
Thank you for your suggestions! Look forward to working with you when you have time after your move.
If DMS is making the effort to do bees, you might consider building a hive you can visualize from inside the building. They had this at The Science Place years ago with Lexan sides for viewing. Called an observation hive and they had tubes that led the bees inside to the hive.
But still do the outside hives as well.
This system came out about 10 years ago and uses a system of cams to break open the honey cells without disturbing the bees. Have not tried it nor talked to anyone who has but looks like a fantastic idea.
The flow hive is a terrible idea. You no idea if the honey is ready to harvest, I want until at least 90% of the comb is capped before I harvest. You will only get part of the honey as only a percentage will “Flow” out of the hive, the bees will go crazy once you break the caps trying to recover all the leaking honey. And you lose an opportunity to inspect your hives…
Did you watch the video? Have you used this system or researched it? The video addresses a couple of your comments. I have worked with bees for years but have no hives now. I did not see any bees going ‘crazy’ in the video(s). You don’t break the caps (as per the video) as he showed through the transparent panel showing the fully capped cells. He addresses your comment almost verbatim. The honey remains capped as shown in the video. The back of the cell is cracked open by slight shifts in the position of the foundation board.
You can inspect your hive in the traditional way any time you want. Just pull the foundation boards. They are just like any others except they have a system of cams that shift the back of the cells causing the honey to leak down the middle of the board. Then the cam action is reversed and the cell is intact once again or at least repairable by the bees at a later time. They will eventually open an empty cell, repair and refill it.
Capped honey is ready for harvest. Inspect in the usual way.
It’s pretty expensive and might end up being a terrible idea - if it doesn’t work. Who knows.
But the concept itself is quite ingenious - harvest the honey with the least intrusion to the cells without even removing a board. Removing a board and slicing the cells in half with a hot knife certainly seems more intrusive to me as there is loss of wax, a resource that takes bees time and energy to restore.
Now, as I stated, I have no idea if it really performs as advertised but I’ve never met anyone who knew about bees and said it was a terrible idea and it was emailed to me by another, more experienced beekeeper in his late 70’s with about 30 hives who though it was a pretty cool idea.
To answer your questions, Yes I have done a lot of research on this system, even visited an apiary that had several in use. I stand by my evaluation of the system.
Some discussion would be interesting. Does the system not work as advertised? What are the problems. Seems too good to be true. I’d like to know about the problems with the system. If I start bees again I would otherwise consider the system. My main concern is the cost. I think you could build about 5 hives for the cost of the flow system.
if you look further into the process and bee keeping in general there are several phases. you cant just throw flow frames into an observation hive and have them magically pour out honey.
you have to raise the bees, create a strong stable colony, then you could maybe use your flow frames( in a langstroth style hive not a round observation hive) to harvest from them. but you will need to exclude the queen or else you would just fill your fancy frames with larvae and eggs and kill them when you try and harvest.
overall the main job you have to do is keep the bees happy and healthy which in a langstroth style hive it is well documented and easily repeatable. the flow frames are a nice add on to this style bee keeping if you are going to harvest an established hive but a ground up operation wouldnt make use of this for many moons. making their system overpriced and not very useful when you are just doing normal bee keeping stuff nothing special…
adding a flow frame onto an observation hive would be hard and not too useful.
i would also discourage from an ovservation hive. i could see a tube getting clogged or some storm come through and blow a branch onto their exits and they either die or get loose in the normal rooms. and when we are talking 10k+ bees most people dont handle that well unless inside their suits. also inspections and maintenence would be hard.
i also dont think we would need to own land we just need to find a member who doesnt live too far out and is willing to have us out. then scale it into honey production or renting the hives out for pollination. i think it would be hard to work with the city on their land and their time frames. i definitely wouldnt want my hive in some public park for some rando to come kick over because he thinks that is funny…
Triggerscold,
I know about and have raised bees with different style frames, queen excluders, etc. Indeed, it’s a bit of an art. Probably a top bar hive would be the style for observation and one would, I guess, not worry about harvesting. Just an idea for those interested in observing. Would be an entire project in itself to research the build. Bees are incredibly resourceful about access to their hives and can go through many feet of cracks in a wall to get to their home. Wouldn’t worry about their port getting clogged. It does make them a bit vulnerable but only, I think, to humans who want to get rid of them. I had a colony in some cinder blocks in a cattle ramp at my farm and they were going into the tiniest crack where they had been for perhaps 30 years. Some contractor poisoned them in spite of being asked to leave them alone.
Nobody said anything about combining a flow frame into an observation hive. Those were two independent comments.
Yeah, tough to decide how to manage a hive in the city.
I wish I had more time for the space and the bees. I’m down to one hive that I’m keeping, I sold the rest. I haven’t trained anyone to do a cutout in about 2 years.
On the topic of the flow frames, they are not a terrible idea and they do work. They received lots of hate from skeptical beekeepers but it’s unwarranted. You treat the hive and inspect the flow frames like a traditional frame, you only harvest after you’ve inspected the hive and determined the specific frame you’re harvesting is ready.
The issues I’ve seen is some hives just don’t use them while others take to them like any other frame.
