How to add your Flow Hive Super 🌻🐝

thank you for joining us this morning we're going to be covering how to add your flow have super to your flow hive now there's a few tips and tricks along the way so so tune in if you've got any questions put it in the comments below and we'll get to answering those while we're live so this is your flow home super and this contains the frames that my father and I invented this is the box that allows you to harvest honey directly out of your home without opening it so just the terminology because if you're new to beekeeping in like what's a super a super is a box for collecting honey now if you look at this hive here the bottom box is the brood box so this is where the Queen's laying your eggs the the they're raising their young they're drawing they're the natural comb the way they've always done it and then when they filled up that that's nice and full there's lots of bees and move up here into your super and that's where they store the honey for you to harvest luckily they're store more than they need for themselves not all the time but love at the time and we get to share in the beautiful thing we call honey so once you've assembled your box and if you've got a cedar hive like this you might like to add a coat of oil or you might like to paint it it's up to you and then the next thing we're going to do is insert your frames into the flow super so I've already done that and there's a few things to do to prepare it before you put it onto the hive so I'm going to get a kit here's one here now the first thing and most important thing is you want the cells to be aligned when you put it onto your hive if they're not aligned let's say it's been chipping and it's been banging around like this you'll find some of the cells won't actually be lined up and then the bees can't use them for honey sewage so before you put it on your hive it's important to go through and reset all of those frames to do that you see there's two slots here at the top you'll need to insert a key into the top slot and turn it and that simply pushes the parts down and makes all the cells line up into hexagons well partly formed hexagons the bees then go cover it all in wax complete the cells and start adding their nectar and going through that process of reducing that water content to create honey okay so in order to do that you need to pull out these caps here so all the way along the top then it's a process of making sure you're inserting into the top slot here just put it in all the way to the back to fill that climb and turn it 90 and now it's ready to go so we just go through each frame like that and that gets all those cells in the right position for the bees to start using important step okay almost done and don't forget to put the caps back in if you leave these caps out what happens is ants can go and live in that area at the top which can be a bit of a bit of a nuisance they don't really affect anything unless they really drag a whole lot of dirt into there but still leave your caps in like that so they're now all prepared to go on the hive the next thing you want to do and let's have a look at this see how this is forming a nice flat window you want it if you if you move your finger across they're not to be massive steps between them and the reason why that is is bees could escape if there's gaps so to get them all in line like that all the frames just need pushing forwards so if we go around to the other side here what we've done is put an adjustment screw on the back here and that just needs winding out a little bit to take up the slack now each box can vary a little bit depending on whether you're using your own box I want two bears so what we've down these we'll put a an adjustment screw to to just take up that difference so all you need to do is lift the frame like this screw it out a little bit and just make sure this there's it still goes in but it's pushing the frame forward so you go go through and just wind them out a little bit still make sure they can drop in and then you end up with a nice flat window here that's another important step what we're going to do is put the window cover back on like that and then also the key access cover this is the key access cover goes on like that and you're ready to put that on your higher thinks your need is your smoker your queen excluder your frames all set to go in your flow super and then you're ready to go you got questions put them in the comments below we're going to do that for you now so you can see what it's all about I'm going to add a few puffs of smoke into the entrance here there we go and that should be sufficient I'll leave the smoker by the entrance so the bees keep getting a whiff of smoke that'll just help them calm down so the process of taking the roof off will be a bit easier you need a beekeeping do make sure you're well protected need a good B suit or B jacket have your gloves wear your gloves and only once you're more experienced should you experiment with not having a loves on see that is adjusting the tilt of your hive matter before putting on your super okay that's a good question so adjusting your tilt now the flow hive - we've got levels in the back of the hive and the side of the hive what you want to do is adjust it so that there bubbles in the middle and that will give you the right tilt and that's what your hive should stay on that gives you a three degree slope backwards if you've got our classic version then the hive child is built into the base and what you'll need to do is make sure what it's resting on is level the flow hope to can go on any old surface and the lengths are adjustable on each corner to give it the right tilt bubble in the middle on the back bubble in the middle on the side and you're good to go so the next thing I'm going to need I'm just looking around for my hive tool could you just grab me a hive tool and what we're going to do is lift the lid off this hive and go through the process of putting your super on top so we can do that now and you can see I where there was a little lizard that just ran across the top of this hive now we've got quite a few hive beetles in this hope you can see here and last week we saw that and we hopefully starting to catch them down the bottom of the heart all right so the Queen could be on the roof because we've left the plug out so we're looking around making sure the Queen isn't inside the roof area I generally like to leave the cap in because they do start building a hole or a random combing the roof which can be fun for a while but it can also be a bit of a nuisance and a mess to clean up so this hope I probably will put a cap in okay so one nice thing to do with a smoker is just to give you at the ends a little smoke if you're going loveless not just masks a bit of your own smell you can also add a little bit of a wisp of smoke just on top which gets some of the bees running back in next chisel end of your hive tool guys under the inner cover like this and you can then lift that inner cover off it's gently coming up and the Queen could be on the underside so always make sure you rest the inner cover against the entrance so if she is on here she can just walk back into the hive I'm not seeing her on there but it's always a good idea just to have a quick look and it's good training for looking for the Queen Jack laning that against the entrance and we had an inspection of this hive last week so there's no need for us to inspect that we can see they're ready for a super there's lots of bees in the hive they've drawn out all the combs that they're ready to go so that if you add the super to early before all the frames are drawn out or when there's no nectar flow it'll be a slow process it'll be a slow process of the bees starting to work the flow frames so wait till you see lots of bees and all the frames are drawn out and hopefully you've got a nectar flow ahead here we've had the rains recently the the paper box are all bursting into flower down in the heathland so for us it's a good time to add a super but for a lot of people in the southern hemisphere it's not a good time so if you're in the northern hemisphere then it's springtime a good time to be adding your super if you're in the southern hemisphere you'd only add it if you're in the exceptional case like we are where we're close to the coast in a subtropical region and we have good flowers in the winter time other people in Australia will be generally preparing their hive for winter and not adding more supers at this point any questions put it in the comments below we'll get to answering them so just adding a little bit of smoke because on top of here is going to go the Queen excluder and I know somebody will ask the question that I put my super on and the bees are taking a while to to start working the flo frame so I'll show you a little trick just now that will increase the speed at which they start working those flow frames and that's simply adding a bit of wax from your brood box to the frame so forget the flo frame like this and we get the B's out of the way and we start scraping some of the wax now we were in here last week and cleaned up some of the wax so there's not a whole lot of it but um for the purposes of the exercise I will show you just how to do that Craig Peterson's asking how do you keep your flow frames so clean here's a covered in propolis okay the flow frames are brand new in this case the in terms of the brood frames here which is probably what you're asking about you can see the scrape marks from what's before so we've been in here just a week ago and we scraped some of the propolis and wax off the top as different schools of thought around that lots of ink it was like to keep it nice and clean up here so it doesn't stick to the Queen excluder others like like to leave a bit of reserve there for the bees so it just depends on your strategy there we've got a few Australians wondering when to add and when to take off their supers throughout the winter okay so Australia doesn't get a really long cold winter like many other continents so in many parts of Australia we can leave the super on during the winter unless the colony is very small having said that if you're in the southern parts of Australia you still need to remove the Queen excluder so the bees if they do ball up and move up the hive the Queen isn't left behind and she could perish below the excluder where there's no bit he's keeping her warm so there's there's different strategies there some people like to take their flow so it was off for the winter and some like to leave them on the colder you are if you're if you're Dean your hives out of snow you're probably going to reduce your hive to have less supers for the winter so the bees have a smaller area to maintain and keep warm during that time again there's different schools of thought on that as well so back to what we were doing the flow frame is here if you want to speed up the process or you're just getting impatient or you're curious if you scrape some wax off here ideally you'd have a bit more to scrape off and you can just run that there to all along your flow frame like this - alright you won't damage your flow frames and if you do it right in the window we can watch if you want it like this and the bees will go hang on that's out of place and they'll recycle that wax and start using it in the immediate area and away they go on that flow frame the recipe to get them using your flow frames for the first time quickly is lots of bees in the box combined with a good nectar flow then it happens very quickly so I'm going to put that back into the flow super and there we go ready to go the next thing we need to do is add the Queen excluder on top so choose an opportune moment use some smoke if you need to just to drop that on without squashing any bees around the edge so there we go that's in place next thing is to add the flow super on top so what the Queen excluder does is its limits the Queen from moving up in to the super because the queen is bigger she can't fit through this grid which is a 4.3 millimeter aperture okay next the flow super gets on again making sure there's no bees we're squashing they just slide that into place try and make sure it's neatly lined up like that and you're ready to go next you've got your inner cover now the inner cover could still have a queen on it had it resting on the entrance so it's unlikely if she was there she would have run in and because we've got the excluder in place we don't want to risk the Queen actually ending up in the super so what we're gonna do is shake all the bees at the entrance so if by chance she was on the conde inner cover she could just walk back into the hive so I'm gonna do that now if you're trying to get bees off something you need to give it a good sharp shake the rest of the movements in beekeeping is generally slow and steady so you want to get those off good sharp shake at the entrance here just like this you're holding it and okay so we've got a lot of the bees off it still got a few things on this hive and checking the last remaining bees you can even go like that there's only a couple of bees left and they're not the Queen so I'm satisfied that the Queen isn't on the inner cover and I can then put it on top of the flow super and you're ready to go now there's a little bit of wax buildup there I might even just take that off so that it just seats nicely we've got a few people wanting to know about sizing okay there we go so that goes like so and the plug goes in the top which we don't have here right now and on top of that goes things with of your hive so let's go to let that slide over you know cover like that and your house back together the supers on as your bees progress you'll see them starting to work those cells you can see there's none in the window yet they're still down the bottom as the colony grows they'll expand into the super you will have to exercise some patience some colonies are very slow to expand if you've got a really strong season with a lot of flowers a lot of nectar then they they will start expanding quickly now last week we had a look in the brood box and we noticed there was lots of brood even all the way out to the edges so expecting this hive to pick up in numbers quite quickly if that coincides with a nectar flow we'll see them starting to work these flow frame cells you have a look in the in the back window they're not quite coming up as yet it'll take them a little while to get used to the idea of going through the Queen excluder upstairs and starting to work those flow frames so just again checking we've got a nice flat window here there's no gaps for bees to get out and everything's ready for the bees okay question on sizing so Ken haze is asking does that fit on a standard slipper so the answer is yes so some people prefer just to buy a super and add it to their convention or higher and others prefer to buy the whole slow hive now the the advantages of getting the whole flow hyb is where thought about the tilt of the hive and you've got it ready for the honey harvesting angle and so on if you're using a conventional bottom board and conventional breadbox then what you might find is the if you slope it back then a whole lot of water will run into the higher because the landing board doesn't have the tilt like we've arranged here and water considering a hive if you've got a a bottom board which is just a straight conventional one without the mesh then you actually need to slope the hoe forward but then tilt it back for the honey harvesting now there's a bit of a caveat there and that's at the back of the hive here we've designed a lake back point so any honey that seeps through depending on how well they're BC or the parts goes into the trough and throw a lake back point at the bottom here sometimes they'll block it up and you've got to unblock that but we've designed it so the tube you put in for harvesting automatically unblocks that lake back point so what happens if you're tilting the hive forward for a conventional bottom board and hive then honey could build up in there but the lake back point isn't in use so you end up with a whole lot of honey that you can't even see up the other end in the trough which could start to ferment you then go to tilt your head back to harvest and all of a sudden you see there's a buildup of honey in here you have to clean out before harvesting that's all so it is an advantage to have a bottom board that's a screen bottom board and is the landing board is sloped in such a way that you can have the high at three degrees slope backwards the honey harvesting angle at all year round so but having said that there's still a lot of people enjoying our flow supers on conventional hives and it's certainly something you can do and to answer your question this is an eighth frame Langstroth sized box and it has six flow frames in it because I've designed the flow frames with deeper cells because these when they're away from the brood nest like to create deep ourselves for honey storage so it all gets a bit confusing but the flow six is actually a eight frame length shot so it will fit your standard eight frame Langstroth they flow seven which you can see over there behind the red flowers is a ten frame length shot size box so if you're trying to match it up with your gear the the seven is the ten frame length straw and six is the eight frame lengths Joffe so that informations from that website so you can help an action by all means you can add conventional size you can add other boxes more brood boxes more boxes for collecting honeycomb whatever you want to do you can add to your flow hive Belinda says might be is a building cone between my flow super frames this makes it difficult to lift fro flow frames to check that they are properly capped I'm too scared to break these joins as it puts honey into the brood box okay so that's an unusual scenario to have a whole lot of comb between the flow frames we've sized it so it's really unlikely that they do that now really if ever see it so I'd like to see some photos of that comb in between the flow frames but what you want to do if that's the case is actually get in there and cut that came away and give them another chance to start building in the flow cells we've put a lot of effort into trying to make sure they wouldn't do that the spacing between the comb surfaces being a bit too narrow for them to want to build comb between the flow frames so again it's unusual what bees will be bees and do unusual things you can count on that and you'll find that eventually they'll get the idea once they've got them all waxed up and sticky then they'll treat them like any other sticky box and they're unlikely to build comb between the frames again if you're just meaning at the top sometimes you get into the situation where bees will be joining the flow frames together just at the top level in which case you just cut that with your hive tool and that'll make it easier for you to lift the flow frames out lorries asking can you use an escape board to remove the flow hive when packing down for winter let's take this off the answer is yes you can use an escape board so for those that don't know what an escape board is it's basically like a one-way B valve for bees it's a it's a board that's it's about this high in between two boxes and in the corners is a system where the bees are likely to go one way but not come back the other and beekeepers use it to clear out bees from a box so that when they come back there's less bees in the box typically for when you're harvesting conventional in the conventional way now what I find is if you if you try using a skateboard you'll often find that the bees actually a lot of base dania super unless you have a good reason for them to go downwards so generally what beekeepers do when they're using in a skateboard effectively is put a box underneath it that's got a whole lot of sticky comb that needs cleaning up and all those bees go down to do that work and leave the top box empty so I've found that if you just put an escape board between these two boxes and this is already full of honey then you'll find that there still be a whole lot of bees when you come backs off and the limited use however they are a popular tool for beekeeping but more so when you are under separating with another super so the bees go down and leave the top super ready to take back for the processing in the conventional way drains asking how does the flow hive perform in the tropics okay it performs wonderfully in the tropics we have people giving bees in the in the that the tropical regions we have bees keeping people keeping bees when they're deep in snow in winter and the flow hive works in all cases we even have people keeping bees in flow hives that different species have got people in Japan keeping bees in model flight modified dam shorter smaller flow home boxes with the Asian honeybee or or the apis cerana japonica and so yet there you can keep bees in tropical climates you can keep them in really cold climates what you find in the tropics is you get a very long season with honey coming and going all year round we're in the subtropics here but we're on the coast and we find we get that here as well so we get beautiful honey flows in the winter if we've had the rain and we get good honey flows in spring summer can be a bit patchy and that's about our season now if you're in the colder regions then the season tends to be compressed the plants or wait to flower when in the warmer months and you get an abundance of honey and nectar in those warmer times and then not much at all in the colder times so Everywhere's got its unique unique patterns and the best information will come from your local beekeepers they tend to be really tuned in with the weather and what's going on with the flowers they're watching their buds on the trees and starting to prepare to capture that honey flow when it comes your tis asking what is your recommendation for starting a hive in autumn winter in Sydney okay autumn winter Sydney so Sydney's on the coast it's it's some a little bit cooler than here but that you could potentially start a hive if you thought that was flowers coming ahead the best information will come from your local beekeepers on that it could be a good idea to get yourself prepared and start your hive in spring especially because if you're buying bees from a bee breeder they're much more available in that springtime but it's a good idea to get yourself prepared and get your order in and start to start watching videos and learning we do have a new initiative the beekeeper door with lots of high-level training videos aim to bring people with no experience through to a deep knowledge of beekeeping if you want to sink your teeth into that it's free to try so there's is that option too and we've also got lots of training videos on our website back to your question I would start a high of almost any time of year around here getting further down south like Sydney you may choose to wait a little bit longer and do it in the springtime it's up to you but ask your local beekeepers you might be in an area that has a good autumn and winter flow any questions put them in the comments below and we'll get to answering them Seto what is a honey flow so a honey flow is a term used in beekeeping to describe the time in which flowers producing nectar in abundant levels the bees then go out and get that nectar and bring it back so when a honey flows on you've got honey coming into your home and you can see it really filling up the frames it's a wonderful thing you can watch in the back of the hive here as the bees start bringing that nectar and splashing it all around the cell walls and start the evaporating process and it's quite exciting you'll often smell a beautiful smell in your apiary as as they're evaporating the the nectar you can often connect that smell - what flowers they're going after some times of year we get the smell so strong it's almost overpowering drifting through the office here from our area so a honey flow is is it wonderful and exciting time where we don't have much of a honey flow at the moment we've got a bit of a trickle coming in if we have a look at a hive over here we can see whether we've got so here there's not a whole lot going on you can't see any sales of honey at all so the bees are probably a little bit hungry at the moment here I have a quick look around see if I've got a better example no really so the bees a little bit on the hungry side at the moment there's a couple of sales of honey here but really they've gotten a bit hungry and they've eaten most of their honey and away from them when there's that pulling it back from the extremities you can see some honey ants themselves here when you've got a block of capsules like that and then nothing excuse me that they've actually eaten the rest away here you've got a couple of cells of honey they're really not much to go on so judging on last week there's actually less honey here than last week so he won't be expecting a whole lot to happen with our new super for a little while yet okay can you go into more detail about what happens when a bee finds of patch of flowers so the process is quite interesting the bees collecting nectar and bringing it back to the heart first of all what happens is Scout bees fly up from the hive now being a scout bees one of the jobs some of the bees will do in their short life they fly out and that they'll look in up to a 10 kilometer radius there's an amazing they can fly that far they would then find a nectar source flow back to the hive and they they may even be carrying a nectar load that's almost almost their body weight now they'll come back into the hive and in the dark in amongst potentially 50,000 bees they do a dance and I do that dance by waggling their bottom in a way that is about one second of waggle is roughly equal to one kilometer of distance so our understanding of the bees language is I'm sure limited because I've noticed they can tell the bees all sorts of intricate details but one second equals about one kilometer then they do a dance in with an axis in relation to the Sun to show the direction of where the forage is so they're doing the figure of eight dance there's a there's a line in the middle of the of the of the figure of eight that tells the hive the angle in relation to the Sun of where the nectar is if the next is really close they'll do what's called a round dance where they go around in a circle once the bees have that information they will then fly out to that nectar source and they actually give quite accurate instructions of where it is by my experiments and then a whole lot of bees will go and collect an amazing amount of nectar a hive like this when it's full of bees could visit 50 million flowers in a day they then fly back with that nectar load they dribble the neck debt down their tongue wave it in the air as they fly to start reducing the water content of that nectar when they get back into the hive they pass that nectar to a receiver B so they don't just go and put it straight in the cell they actually pass it to a receiver B which again starts to reduce the water content that receiver B then goes and starts to put it on the cell walls of a cell and you'll see that getting splashed around here in the window sometimes when there's a good honey flow on they then use a variety of techniques of Fanning and moving the honey around also taking water out through their bodies and reducing that water content to below 20% in that process they're adding enzymes to the honey also so your honey ends up this amazing mixture of of flowers from up to a 10 kilometer radius often one type of flower but if there's not enough of that flower they'll move on to other flowers as well so it can be a mixture and so it's full of vitamins minerals vitamins healing properties and as they get that honey down below 20% they then put their capping on and you can watch them put their capping on through this windows or through the end when they hear when they're deduced that the water content is low enough for the honey to keep in their hive for later so basically they're storing honey for the times ahead when they might not be a whole lot of nectar lucky for us there's such amazing forages they often store more than they need and we can share some too how did the breeze create the wax cutting so the wax capping is created by the wax gland and it's done by the young bees so one of the early jobs in a in a short life over B is producing wax and building comb and what I find incredible is that they're producing these little flakes of wax from their wax gland and then they're they're squishing that into the shape with their mandibles and starting to build comb now how one becomes along with a little flake of wax and starts building combing the perfect intricate hexagons that they make I don't know there's some some collective way where they can all group together and create this beautiful pattern of honeycomb in the brood box it's some really quite an incredible thing and hundreds of bees might have contributed to that one single hexagon cell so they really know what they're doing and they're very organized Jennifer asks do the worker bees eventually do all of the jobs so the worker bees do almost all of the jobs in the home the queen is basically an egg layer she can lay up to a couple of thousand eggs a day and that's what she does then the worker bees go through a range of jobs in their life in the foraging season they might only live for about six months and the first thing they do is cleaning chores around the hive where they're cleaning themselves they actually emerged from then they move on to things like there could be the Undertaker's taking out bees that have died taken out of the hive they move on to producing wax they move on to feeding the baby bees one of the first jobs is feeding the babies in the hive then as they progress they will go on their orientation flights and learn about the proximity of their hive and then turn into a forager be where they will head out following instructions from a scout be collect that nectar or pollen and bring it back into the hive so yes the worker bees who are all female do almost all of the work in the hive the male bees there's people still looking into their role in the hive but mostly their role is to fly out of the hive hang out in a drone congregation area and wait to fit to mate with a queen that hopefully flies by and then if they're unsuccessful they return back to the hive in the evening term we've got a few beginners wanting to know what would be the ideal setup in your opinion for a beginner and what extra pieces of equipment alongside the hive might you need to get started okay great question so we tend the most popular hive that we sell is just like this the Western redcedar six frame flow hive now having six frames it's a bit lighter to lift the top off and it's also the cedar wood is the most popular because it's quite durable you can oil it and leave it like this it doesn't need a bit of attention if you want to keep it looking like this you need to give it a rub and another coat of oil every six months or so so for people use this set up which is the flow home six frame in all parts of the world however if you're in a cold climate there is quite a popularity of using the larger size the seven frame size flow hive a little bit more area for their babies in the bottom box a little bit more honey storage for those winters that are long and cold and what about the any additional pieces of equipment you might need to get started so you will need a smoker to do your food inspections you'll need a good be suit or be jacket like this one you'll need gloves you'll need their hive tool and that's your basic setup so that comes in a kit we have a kit with the B jacket or suit the hive tool for lifting your frames out and their gloves and then the smoker is a separate purchase although we do bundle it all together if you want to have a look at our website we've got bundles with everything you need to get started Jon's asking is it best to do a beekeeping course before buying a flow hive or can people use flow hives without any experience it's a great question so to answer your question people do it both ways now some people like to do a lot of study before they jump into something in other people like to jump straight into something and learn as they go both ways are valid now if you decided to a beekeeping course that's a wonderful thing you get some hands-on experience before starting beekeeping if you decide to jump straight into it then we have a lot of training material a lot of videos showing you how to do all the things you're starting your hive building it up adding your super doing your brood inspections looking for pests and disease and so on so if you if you're jumping straight into it then do you check out all about training videos and you may also like to have a look at the BT Borg if you want some real in-depth information designed to take you from from a beginner through to having a really deep knowledge about beekeeping and there's a lot of experts in the world that are contributing to that space in order to give really high quality training material thank you very much for watching let us know what you'd like to hear next week we do have one more burning question and otherwise tune in again next week rick has an excellent question he asks can you use wax on the flo frame scraped from a separate hive or should it only be used by the hive you're putting a flow hive super on okay great question so that brings about the the disease issue so generally it's a good idea to keep your equipment separate from hive to hive if you can that includes your hive tool if it's waxy then heat it up a little bit scrape that wax off and give it a bit of a clean so the next time you use it it's nice and clean you're not passing pathogens from one hive to another now flow hive beekeeping has the advantage of you're not taking all the honey supers off to a processing shed and then bringing all those frames back my experience of doing that when I was running a small commercial Avery was that it was very hard to control which frame went to which hive and therefore there was a lot of sharing of equipment between hives generally the flow hive stays with that box however there does come time sometimes when you need to move equipment from hive to hive but when you do that you do risk sharing things like AFB or EFB which are two diseases that that honeybees can get from one hive to another so where possible don't share between hives so don't add the wax from one hive to an but if there's a good reason let's say you're taking a split or you've got a hive with a failing queen and you want to take some resources from this hive so Whitby eggs on it and add it to this hive so they can raise a new queen then that might be a good enough reason in order to share equipment or parts of one hive to another height so if you don't need to and don't do it if you need to then it's a risk you take in me giving thank you very much for watching let us know what you'd like us to cover next week and thank you for tuning in [Music]

Channel: Flow Hive

Views: 67,165

Rating: 4.8976302 out of 5

Keywords: flowhive, flow hive, beekeeping, honeyflow, bee, honey, honeybee, bees, urban beekeeping, beekeeper, flow honey, savethebees

Id: bXglD5KWtLQ

Length: 46min 5sec (2765 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020