![]() ![]() With the flow hive, you walk to the hive for the harvest, and once you leave, your harvest activity is done.Īll you need to do is go and wash up the tubes you used and store them in readiness for the next harvest. If you choose to use an escape board, you may need a third trip because the first one is used to install the escape board. Once the honey has been extracted, you need to make another trip to the apiary to return the supers to their respective hives. Transport them to your processing area, where you either have a centrifuge or a large sieve for the crush method. The first step is to collect full frames of honey. This is just conjecture, but what is known for sure is that within a week of your harvest, the bees will be remodeling the super and preparing it for another round of storage.įlashback to the pre-flow hive era. They become aware of the missing honey as they go across the stores and probably open up the cap to investigate. I believe that the wax capping on a cell would vibrate differently when the cell is full of honey than when it is empty. They break open the wax seals, which they repurpose elsewhere in the hive while these bees fill the cells with nectar. In a day or two, the bees realize the cells are empty. No dead bees, no bits of comb, and no external impurities. The trough is not accessible to the bees, so your honey doesn’t require any filtration at all. You can do this one frame at a time or have all the frames release their honey at once. Then, it is time to remove the tubes that were directing the honey into your container. Once it’s all out, reset the cells to their original position with the same key. Fresh honey passes through the tubes at the hives’ designated openings, and into a jar. The hive slopes slightly toward the back, allowing the honey to naturally flow out of the trough. This releases the honey, and it flows down to a trough. The beekeeper uses a key, a long metallic rod, some tubes, and a storage jar, to split the cells without breaking wax caps. When the honey is capped, it’s ready for harvest. You can check on the capping through the viewing windows of the hive. Once the nectar has reached the right moisture level, the bees will cap it. ![]() The bees begin to coat the plastic with a layer of wax before they store nectar in the cells. The flow frames are fitted with food-grade plastic combs. The miracle of the flow hive is in the super. They continue to make improvements to the initial design, including the introduction of a hybrid version of the flow hive and a new version known as Flow Hive 2 with a few added features. Since then, the flow hive has continued to grow in popularity with a sprinkle of controversy.įortunately, the innovators have provided a lot of free material online on their website about how the flow hive works. ![]() This is a testimony to the demand existing in the market for an easier way to harvest honey. It remains one of the most successful crowd-funding enterprises to date. Their product has found a home in over 100 countries worldwide. Where they were hoping to raise $100,000, they managed to pull support amounting to over $13 Million. What a success the crowdfunding exercise in Australia was. Once they had finalized the design, they needed to get capital in order to begin production. Stuart, with his engineering insight, finally figured out how to split the cells of the comb, releasing the honey with no effect nor disruption to the bees. This idea gave rise to 10 years of design, prototypes, failures, and finally, success. With the guidance of his father, Stuart Anderson, his love for bees grew with every passing year.Ĭedar felt sure that there had to be a better way to get the sweet prize from the hive without squashing the gift-givers. He started when he was just six years old. Sometimes, like Australian Cedar Anderson, your love for bees can start young. Brief History of Flow Hiveīeekeeping can be a lifelong addiction. It’s a nifty invention that takes away the heavy lifting and bee disruption of the honey harvesting process. This action splits the comb in such a way that the honey drips down to a trough and flows out of the hive without breaking the wax caps. Instead of opening the hive roof and having to carry away the honey supers, you crack open the back door with a special key. When it is, they cap the cells, just like they would in any other hive.Įnter the beekeeper. The bees will go about their business filling in nectar in the cells and fanning away the moisture until the honey is finally ready for long-term storage. The entire comb has been constructed for the bees in order to fit a back door to the honey pantry. It comprises two boxes, a brood box, which is similar to a regular Langstroth brood box, and a flow super. Basically, the flow hive is a Langstroth hive that allows you to harvest honey without opening up the hive. ![]()
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