Flow Hive Secret - How-to prepare your Flow Hive frames for success and give your bees a head start.

[Applause] [Music] [Music] hello hello hello well it is February 15th it's the day after Valentine's Day and looks like spring is coming we've got we've got dog woods in bloom we've got dandelions in bloom and a host of other trees I can see those starting to bloom the blueberries out front I can see the buds starting to come out so it won't be long before the nectar is flowing which means it is time for me to start preparing for the 2020 bee season there's a lot of work to do I didn't realize there would be this much work to do getting ready for bees when I got ready for bees the very first year because I didn't have one that many bees and two I didn't have this much equipment and three I didn't know I was gonna need this much equipment but it looks like this year it's going to be a good year for the flow we don't seem to have a drought no drought in sight which means the nectar is going to be flowing and I've got some work to do now we're not going to go over everything that I'm going to be doing to prepare for spring at least not in this video maybe we'll have another video after this where we talk about it or we can go through some of the things that I have to do but today one thing that I want to get done is get my flow frames prepared now the flow hive I have one one real flow hive out there I bought it when I first started beekeeping this is it and this is the the real deal right from flow shipped here from Australia flow hive and last year when I put this flow frame these flow frames on the on the hive I had pre waxed the frames even though the people at flow said you don't have to pre wax the frames it's not something she has to do the bees will get in there they will seal the frames up start packing the honey away then yeah break the seal drain the honey and everything is good but I pre waxed it anyways and the bees did take to it and they went out they filled it up I'd actually drained this twice last year so we did get some honey out of it will have some harvest videos this year this was before I started making videos that I harvested it but last summer midsummer I went out to ebay and I found some more flow frames they are real flow frames but they didn't have the box they were just a set of frames so I went ahead and I built a box just like theirs and put the frames in the box I left these frames on the hive oh gosh from maybe June through the end of the season and there were bees in the box they were running around they looked like they were sealing it up but at the end of the year when I took this off of the hive the bees hadn't sealed anything up so today what I'm going to be doing is waxing these frames these frames are already waxed I'm not going to do anything to these these frames I'm going to wax to make sure that the the bees can get a good head start and fill those flow frames with honey so this is the wax that I have saved from last year and let me move this flow stuff out of the way that's the real deal flow frame this is my knockoff of the flow frame it was out of the way let's take a look at this wax here so this is the wax that I accumulated my first season of beekeeping this is very pretty it's got some dirt in the front of it here this is just from cappings this is from just you know the Berk home that I pick off the hive I melt it down I don't think that it's going to be enough so I actually ordered off of Amazon and I'll provide a link in the comments below some pure beeswax and this is what I used actually to pre wax these frames last spring so I'm going to put it in the crock pot the wife doesn't get upset but I've borrowed the small crock pot I'm going to melt the wax in it it's gonna be a pain in the butt to get the wax out of the crock pot but I think boiling water will do the trick but I'm going to melt this wax and after it's melted we're going to creat wax the frames I'll go ahead and get started dump this in there from the small pieces in there first well that's a pretty piece of wax isn't it we will start with all the wax that the bees themselves produce let me see if I can clean this up a little bit and then if we need to go open this up and drop one of these in there let me explain to you how these things work the each one of the honeycomb is in two pieces and the way that it works is the honeycomb sits like this there's a seam at the top and a seam at the bottom now the bees have to have to complete the comb by sealing this up and sealing this up and sealing the back they also have to bring the comb out until it's flush because one of the sides of the comb sits further back than the other but the way that the flow frame works is that when it's time to drain the honey you turn a key in the top and what it will do is it will take the configuration of the comb where the bees have sealed it up which looks just like any other honeycomb and it will split it now this will prevent bees from going into the comb to get the honey and the honey will drain out of the hive all the way to the bottom now I was fortunate and that I got to drain the hive twice last year well the other one this one this frame actually never got sealed up I'm looking at it really closely now and I can see that the bees I don't know why I'm gonna try to get in there close I don't know whether you can see this enough but the bees have started to seal this up so they have done some work but it's not ready for up for prime time so to speak I want to make sure that when these frames go on the hive in the nectar flow starts that these bees are going to be able to finish building up at home quickly and start filling it with with honey so let's let's get this party started at least put a taste of honey on there for the bees or a taste of wax so they say hey I know what I'm supposed to do here because this is a whole new generation of bees the bees that are in the hive right now with the exception of the Queen likely have not seen these frames they don't know what they are they don't know what their predecessors did last year to try to fill them up but what they are going to see is they're going to see that hey there's beeswax on here these look like our frames it look like honeycomb let's finish these up I think they'll be extremely sad when they find out that they leak into my jar but hey that is the price you pay if you're a bee and you live in a very nice hive with central heat and air again my goal is not to seal these frames completely my goal is to get some wax on there the bees should take care of the rest I just want to give them a head start it is my understanding that the father and son who developed this and let me tell you this is a great invention it's expensive but it's a great invention the father and son he developed this actually did write their names in the history book they're gonna be right up there next to Langstrom because they have revolutionized beekeeping and again the flow hive was one of the reasons I got into beekeeping in my garden wasn't getting pollinated so I started looking up beehives and beekeeping and I came across these guys and the flow hive I watched a few videos first I thought it was too good to be true then I went out to YouTube and I watch some more videos of some of the people that were out there using them first-gen and it was like magic that's myself gosh I've got to get in on some of this there's a way to do beekeeping without having to get into the hive and get stung I'm gonna do it well unfortunately well actually fortunately you do still have to get into the hive I have to say that I enjoy it and I've learned a lot I've learned a lot about animal husbandry even though it's a they're only bees they're not from the animals there are insects but I've learned a lot about it and I tell you these bees are amazing really amazing these are not lazy tell you that what I like to live like a bee not a chance not a chance talk about talk about a strict society they have no problem just killing you and removing you from the hive if you don't do what they want you to do if you're not pulling your weight so to speak there is no second chance they chew off your wings and kick you out everybody's got a job and they start that job from the very minute they're born that's something else that I thought was unique the worker bees which are 99% of the hive those females when they're born they chew their way out of their cell and the very first thing they do once they're out of a cell once they start cleaning up their cells so that the Queen can lay another egg now the boy bees lucky for them they don't even have to chew themselves now they start chewing themselves out then all the workers come over help the boys get out the boys climb out walk away and all the worker bees all the females clean up the the cell and prepare for the Queen so you would think you would think that being a boy bee and the hive would be the the best thing in the world because you don't have to forage for honey you don't have to build comb you don't have to take care of baby bees you don't have to do anything except for wait all summer long for a Virgin Queen from your hive or from another hive go out take a flight mate and call it a day the only problem with being a boy bee is that although you sit around the hive and get fed and don't have to do anything to get that food when you finally do go on a mating flight and find that Queen inmate has a very last thing you will do because after the boy bee is done mating with the Virgin Queen the boy beer the drone falls right out of the sky dead I think I would be a Sullivant drone if that were the case and if you're not fortunate enough in the bee world to be a drone who actually gets to mate with a queen come fall all the girl bees who have been working so hard all summer long raising the baby bees building the comb collecting nectar collecting pollen feeding the baby bees feeding the Queen tending to the Queen all of those girl bees see the boy bees has nothing more than couch potatoes if there's such a thing in the bee world and the girl bees we'll go up to the boy beast chew off their wings in the fall and kick them out of the hive and they freeze to death on the ground or get eaten by ants so with that in mind I can pretty much say there is no way in the world I would want to live in a be like Society they are very organized very methodical but that comes at a price it comes at a price and the price is death to anybody who does not comply with the rules of the kingdom so to speak not something I would like to live in no way oh that's nice that's really nice so let's try that huh this is the way I should have been doing it the whole time look at that was a nice job does a nice job [Music] well I did not do this to begin with holy moly you know I think it's going to do a better job at filling the gap between the takoma especially if I do it that away and then turn it over do it again my only fear is I'll get too much wax on it if I do it this way [Music] oh that's the way to do it the old way the new way what to do with the new way unfortunately it took me until I hit the last frame to do that [Music] all right so there you have it we are done pre-waxed seeing these frames let's put them back in the box the way that they go in there now again you know what let me show you this because you may be able to save yourself some money well let's just leave this one lay up here so this is a standard this is a standard hot body this is just that eight frame deep now you can also do this with a ten frame deep but what I did is I mimicked exactly what Flo does on their on their hive so I found some of these frames actually I found these frames on eBay and it was a lot cheaper than buying the flow hive or the flow super with the frames in it you can just buy the individual frames from Flo but you can also find them on eBay now there are knockoffs out there the Chinese made and I'm sure they'll work however I just can't bring myself to buy the chinese knockoffs because the folks who invented Flo they're great makers they put a lot of time effort energy and thought into this and they need to get paid so I'm not going to I'm not going to buy counterfeit frames but I will continue to look on ebay to find others and if you find any on eBay just know that I'm probably going to be bidding against you um however after you get the frames you can make your own flow hive you put a box together cut the bottom out and you don't die you don't glue that you uh cut the top off build yourself a little handle and the only thing there's two things that you're going to have to do here in order to make this work you're going to have to put a shim a small shim in the side of the box both front and back because these boxes are just a little bit you see if I can get down on the camera a little shim here these boxes are a little bit too wide for the flow frame so you put the shim in there that will make sure that the boxes are held tightly together and then you'll have to get yourself a metal bar or something to brace it along the bottom I believe this came out of a filing cabinet you know one of the dividers for a filing cabinet cut the ends off drilled a hole screwed it in and that will give me the rigidity that I need in the bottom to make sure the box is not going to come apart on the hive that's very similar to what what Flo has done but when you're done it works just like the real flow hive that if you buy from Flo you're going to have to spend when it's all said and done if you buy the whole hive a thousand dollars and I like the flow hive I liked it so much I wanted a second one the only problem is I didn't want to spend $1000 on the second one so with that in mind I built this one and of course now I can't get the doggone thing to go in I've it via I set this up very very tight I probably could have made it not so tight there we go and there she sits so now I have prepared this flow hive for spring this flow hive is already prepared the bees have already got it sealed up last year at the end of the season there was a little bit of honey in there and instead of breaking the seals and getting that honey I just set the frames out and let the bees clean them up and they they robbed out the frames but the frames are still sealed they just pull the caps off grab the honey so they will be ready to go so we'll have to flow frames out there this year and then the rest of my hives are gonna be Langstrom thoughts now before I wrap this video up I'm gonna let you know what I've got going on for the rest of this weekend and probably next weekend in the weekend after I'll show you that we used all that wax by the way it's all gone but what I've got going on for the rest of this weekend is I've got to build frames lots of frames I've also got to build mediums and two more hives so I've purchased a hundred frames I've got foundation for those frames coming in so I've got to put all the frames together I've got two of the five pack seconds as far as medium supers go so I'm going to be putting those together getting those stained and finished which is a lot of work but get those ready for the the spring flow and I've got two new roofs and some bottom boards some stands so we're gonna set up two new hives this year which means I've got a lot of work to do I didn't realise getting into beekeeping that there would be this much work but there is this much work it's it's a great hobby it's a lot of fun but there's more to it than just getting honey out of the hives you really have to take care of your bees and there's a lot that goes into it and I'm learning as we go hopefully next year I will have all of this together and I won't have to build new new honey supers or build new frames or pre wax my boxes all of that stuff should be taken care of and it will be an easier season but this year the second year but because my apiary is growing it's a little bit more work than it was last year so with that said I will touch base next weekend it's going to be a lot of work this weekend to get this stuff done and I will let you know what my progress is but until then happy beekeeping and I will see you later have a great day [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Bug Farmer

Views: 22,633

Keywords: Flow hive, prewax flow frames, flow hive 2, how-to flow hive, wax flow frames, flow hive tips, flow hive hacks, tip and tricks, viral video

Id: zC88ydDB6hc

Length: 23min 30sec (1410 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 16 2020