August check-in: the bees in our Flow Hive have been busy building cut-comb deeps and are slowly filling up the Flow frames. Hmmmm. Yesterday I decided to dig a little deeper and I ended up harvesting one full cut-comb deep, the second of the summer. In the medium below the Flow, the bees had lovely brood, a full frame of pollen, and honey (along with some crazy-cross comb). I harvested one medium of honey, tidied up the cross-comb, added a queen excluder, and modified the Flow box by reducing it by half. We are hoping to harvest honey from two of the Flow frames in September along with the two remaining cut-comb deeps. One cut-comb deep = 9 pounds of honey! Photos: taking the lid off the Flow, cut-comb deep, partially filled-up Flow frames, lovely worker brood, many flavors of pollen, harvesting the honey, five honey flavors from one comb
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Our Flow Hive has an observation window, which is SO cool. I tried something new this year: I put TWO upper entrances on the Flow hive; this gives the girls two separate pathways straight into the Flow deep with their nectar and pollen and seems to be more efficient for everyone. We are just running one hive this year, as we lost a queen in early June and decided to just combine them rather than re-queen so late. They are going strong! Looking forward to our first Flow Hive harvest this summer. Best review of the Flow Hive: by Hillary of Girl Next Door Honey
I am excited to report that we have our FLOW hive up and running. As you can see in the photo above, the bees are checking out the new system. We have four FLOW frames in the middle of the deep, with two cut-comb honey deeps on each side. Right on schedule, the bees are beginning to wax up the cracks and we look forward to seeing them fill the frames with honey. We are trying out a couple new things this year: in addition to running one FLOW hive, we have purchased deeps from Denmark; our goal is to keep our bees more cozy through the damp winter.
Meanwhile, looking in the side peek-a-boo window, the bees are busy drawing out traditional comb, and loading it up with nectar. An unexpected perk: we now have an observation hive, and can watch the bees in action with minimal disturbance. In just two days the workers drew out the second comb and have almost filled both with nectar. We are simply entranced with the show.
Our ingenious Aussie beekeeping inventors have passed the $5 million mark on their Indigogo campaign this morning! Though we won't be using the Flow frame this honey season, we will have ours ready for spring 2016. This ten-minute video gives you the step-by-step process of how the Flow Frame does its magic. Enjoy!
This brilliant father & son team have invented a device that allows you to harvest honey without taking apart the hive and disturbing the bees. Good for the bees and easy on the beekeepers. On Sunday, Cedar and Stuart Anderson opened an Indigogo account site for crowd-funding and within 24 hours had raised over 2 million dollars=to become the most successful crowd-funding project ever! BeePeeking is a proud sponsor of the Flow Hive and we are excited for the success of their venture. Currently, we only harvest cut-comb honey, so this will be a nice addition to our already less invasive honey harvesting habits. Please visit Flow Hive's Indiegogo campaign to get all the sweet details. For your convenience and viewing pleasure, I have reposted one of Flow Hive's videos for you. Enjoy! Hats off to those creative Aussies! First the Sun Hive and now this: |
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