How to tell when your Flow Hive is ready to harvest 🍯🐝🌻[LIVE]

today we're going to have a look at the at the hives and cover the question we often get and that's how to tell when your Flo hives ready to harvest so let's take a look at some of these hives and have a look at the differences between the frames and have a look at some frames that are ready to harvest we will actually have us some honey so stay tuned in for that if I open here then I can see the bees are actually filling up these cells really nicely now this was supered 18 days ago so it Springs come they split okay that's our stuffing and that was connected to the new Wi-Fi 2.4 okay we're back up now this hive has been about 18 days since we supid it and you can see them putting that beautiful nectar into the frames if you come and have a look at the side window now it's not always that fast it just happens to be springtime here and the bees are really really going for it bringing the nectar so I sort of matching up the side window in the end window to gauge what's going on inside the hive and you can see the bees they're doing their beautiful job and the nectar glistening in the cells of the flow frame so you can see that that isn't ready to harvest because the bees haven't put their wax capping onto the frame yet we'll go and have a look at what it looks like when the bees complete the cells dry the honey out and put their wax capping back on so if you come down this way there's quite a few hives here at various different stages so this one here you can have a look we did have us some honey from this yesterday we also harvested some honey from this week so we've got a bit of a difference between them was the frame we harvested yesterday and you can see here there's not much hunting at all although they've already taken the capping off and started to fill this cell here with with honey again with nectar so on this frame here in contrast looks like it's quite full you can see the capping now the frame looks like that then it's ready to harvest it's a pretty good gauge what's happening on the end happening in the middle if we come around to the side window just to get an idea of what it looks like yeah you can see a lot of capped honey there you have a look hard to say there's lots of bays but you can see instead of being all that open hexagons with the nectar glistening it's wax that's been capped off like a shape that's called the capping and that's when the bays have reduced that water content usually to below 20% and that means that honey will keep so the bays can use it later and also means it's ready for the for us if we choose to have us some you can see your waggle dance going on there just sent a screen now there's some there's a bee okay it just stops got a little little little camera-shy okay still waggling a little bit so be interesting to see what it's telling it looks like it's a round dance which means the nectar is really quite close by so as you chain in with the bees you can start to tell actually how far away they're flying to to get their nectar just by their dance on the honeycomb surface okay let's go back to the to the view of the frames now this was my father and I was invention and one of the things we we added which turned out to be a wonderful thing is the the view image frames where you can really tell what's going on and this view changes day by day depending on what's going on with your bees and the flowers so it's some quite a nice thing to look at this regularly and see whether they got honey coming in or whether they haven't and if they've got honey coming in they're building up and there's some fall frames and it's a good time to harvest now what I'm gonna do is connect these little shelf brackets now this key hole here at the top just goes onto the screw now if you've got that pre-adjusted it's pretty simple put that over the screw and just turn it like that same on the other side the screw turn into position you know the color that we pulled off here earlier slots right in here to form the she'll like that and next we'll grab a jar choose that nice full frame where we're talking about here take the cap out like that take the key excess cover out and the top cap making way for the honey now don't forget to put your tube in there's a little little piece here which goes into the bottom of the frame now if you've got questions put them in the comments below because we're here every week to answer your questions to help you get started and also let us know what you'd like to see we've been covering things like catching swarms doing splits doing breed inspections there's something you really want to know about and let us know in the comments below and we'll be sure to cover its in okay now if you insert this key then just go a little way at first and turn it and what that does is it opens part of the frame it can be a bit hard to open the whole frame at once so if you do it in segments it's a lot easier okay and one more I'm just gonna leave the key in that vertical position to add pressure to any cells that are still releasing because they're covered in wax and propolis all the cells are joined together and what you're actually doing is moving the working parts of the flow frames and breaking that the wax that the bees have have put in place there and meanwhile your bees are just on there the frame surface so today we're covering how to tell when your flow hive is ready to harvest if you've got questions put them in the comments below and we can answer them live or if you want to let us know what you'd like to see next time and also put that in the comments okay you did notice well picked up that when we looked in the viewing window there was a bit of Wax it doesn't cause issues really it's only when you go to pull the frame out it can get a little bit more messy so it's not really an issue if you pull your frame out the bees will usually start chewing that away again it's more an aesthetic thing that you might like to clean up one day now that honey is raging out it's a nice warm day here and we better remember to swap these jars so someone remind me if I'm stuck answering questions and missing filling up with those jars of honey well that's YUM I love honey okay keep putting in your questions below while we keep on harvesting now what you're seeing here if you have a look is um the the pattern of the honey draining towards the center down to the bottom and out of the tube and into your jar if you come to this one this is the frame we harvested yesterday you can see the bees are already down there fixing up all those cells and starting to deposit honey again this one over here we haven't harvested recently will bear to change that jar and it's quite full still I've kept a couple of these frames we harvested last week so the bees are doing well it's the time of year when the honey really comes in around here you know springtime in the southern hemisphere so that really depends on your bees and whether there's a good nectar flow if if you've got a healthy hive lots of bees in there and a nectar flow then they can fill them up really quick now you're hear of people feeling a whole hive in a day which is pretty hard to believe I find the quickest around here is a couple of weeks to feel the full frames however you can also find that months can go by where the bees are actually hungry there's not enough nectar around and and not much happens in your flow frame during that time so really depends lots of bees good nectar flow equals fast filling of the frames keep the questions coming okay so the brood box down here is just the same as any normal lengths trough beehive now it also needs the same care it's always had so that to find out what you need to do to care for your brood box is best to ask local beekeepers because here we commercial beekeepers tend to inspect their brood box a couple of times a year now in in other continents you've got the varroa mites that during these my season you might need to inspect and treat a lot more often so find out from your local beekeepers local bee clubs or our honey flow con forum when how much you need to do in order to look after your bees now that was a stroke of luck it was took a lot of testing we developed it over a 10-year period and we thought we had all of these designs my dad night remove the cappings within the high of thinking that that's what we'd need to do but we found that after we got a system happening where the honey could drain out from beneath the feet and leave the capping in place that the bees just chewed it away fixed up the cells and the whole process that started again now it is um it does go a little bit quicker if you get a little bit of disturbing sound like on the capping and sometimes you do you get a bit of torn capping when you harvest your flow frame in which case the bees are straight in there to fix them up and get the idea however even if the capping stayed perfectly intact the bees walking on it must be like an empty drum skin and they realize that it's actually time to take that capping off and fix up the cell okay now that's a good question antenna I invented this homing but we brought it to the world in in 2015 and I think the way it came to the world it's got so much attention that naturally a lot of conventional beekeepers had to push back because it was this it was coming from every direction there was just thousands of friends and people when people emailing them and saying check out this check out this and they're like go away I've seen it I've seen it and you also get that thing of like if you've been doing darkroom photography or your life and it's it's a long labor-intensive process to get to your photo then somebody comes along and goes here's a here's a new digital thing that you don't need to do all of that process anymore you get the photo straightaway then of course you're going to get pushback so it's natural and it's something to be expected and in terms of how to defend it or you can do is say well one that it does work because there's still this skepticism out there that happened from square one and you can also say look it I don't mind however people want to keep bees that's a great way to keep bees it's great that you're keeping bees and and you know my choice is to use the flow hive because I love the technology and the ease of harvest but actually the beekeeping in terms of looking after your brood nest he's just the same so you can have a box that's got conventional supers or flow supers or or mixed together so it doesn't have to be black and white either flow hive or not flow hive say so I guess you know it's a matter of talking about it and dispelling some of those myths there's there's myths that started from the beginning from the first week when nobody had even tried it I've seen it saying that it's going to kill the bees and it's going to be the end of bees and therefore civilization as we know it and all of this crazy stuff and you know of course it's not true it's just a beautiful gentle way to harvest if you choose to harvest in this way harvested her first frame and okay so if you only got a small amount of honey when you have acid your flow foams there's a couple of reasons why that could happen one is the frame probably wasn't full now if if it indicated that it was full here but actually you didn't get much honey then then there's a few reasons for that one is if you lift the key in that position or if you just turned it quickly maybe all of the parts those didn't lift and didn't provide those channels for the honey to flow down so that's one reason the other reason is the base could be it could be a little bit hungry perhaps so for they've got a bit hungry and they started to eat away the honey so then you can get in a situation where there's capped right right honey around the edges and usually this arc in the middle of the frame now the honey's still good that comes out but you won't get as much and if you have the frame and you notice that there maybe wait a little bit longer for them to refill those cells as the flowers come on the other reason could be the slope of your hive if you've got your hive sloped towards the front and maybe the honey didn't drain out correctly and some honey actually ended up spilling India hives so that's another reason but either way it's nice to do a frame or to gauge what's going on have a look how quickly it feels back up see what's happening in the windows work out where there's a honey flow and whether your frames are nice and full ready to harvest let us know how you go next time you having trouble write to us we're always here to help you that's a great question the bees are storing their honey for times when there's no flowers and lucky for us they store more than they need and we can have some tea now you can choose not to harvest and just leave it there for the bees so you can go away for months at a time and the you can just leave the flow frames for it doesn't matter you don't have to harvest you can just harvest in one frame or even a little part of a frame if you want to it's up to you if you live in a cold climate area you do need to leave enough honey for the bees to survive the winter and that information is best found from your local beekeepers who know how best to get your flow hive to last through the winter I think taffy is asking okay the only really sure way to tell whether it's kept in the middle is by opening up your home and pulling a frame out I don't do that before I harvest because I can get a really good idea by looking at their this view and the side view to know whether it's likely that the bees have kept the center now if they haven't completely capped it it's not the end of the world beekeepers generally take a frame if it's 70% capped and and then you know in the conventional methods so if it's not all capped it's not the end of the world however if your honey is really runny you will have to eat it before it starts turning into me because if the water content is higher than 20% it may start to ferment after some time no problem in our household in eating honey so so you can tell why once the Jazz cooled down it's quite warm now just by having a look at the viscosity if it's not if it's nice and thick it'll last on the Shelf generally or you can get a a a device to to tell the water content of your honey but yet getting back to your question sometimes you do get in a situation where they've eaten out of portion in the middle and started to fill it with nectar again you'll see it in your jar sometimes you get a two-tone honey or some more more liquid honey that comes out first and then the rest of the honey but I find looking at these frames here and looking at the sides you can after a while learn what it means the unsure go ahead and pull frames out and start to have a look at what this looks like and what - compared to what's inside your hive okay good question we actually had that a couple of weeks ago because we've come out of the the winter here and the paperbark honey is a it is one that crystallizes now we found that plenty of honey still came out but some crystallized honey did stay in the frames now in the beginning there was lots and lots of people concerned about crystallized honey not coming out but we haven't had any complaints about it at all and I think the reason being is because the bees keep it warm so it's less likely to be crystallized and if it is staying crystallized and it's usually partially crystallized and starts to flow out leaving me the yeah the bigger crystals behind in the frames now I did do some experiments on this early on I am I put I took frames out of the hive and I let them go candied because I knew it was the paper bark I put it back in and then I tried to turn the key what happened is I got a bit of movement and it it bees detected that the frame had a bit of movement inside and they ate all of the capping off I ate all of the candy out and then refilled it with liquid again so the be solved the problem now can't eat honey in frame if you do get it isn't new to beekeeping at all it's the same with spinning your honey actually a little bit worse if you're going to spend because you take the frames out they cool down overnight and the candy really really sets in and and then you go to spin it a lot stays in your frames so haven't found it's a big problem but do let us know if it if it causes you any issues thanks for all the good questions okay that's a great question now what I find is if you are going to add another brood box then do it after you've got your flow super for because if you go and then put your flow super up above a few boxes it'll take a long time for them to get up there and feel them and you'll actually get quite impatient because you want to see some action in your flow frames and want to see this beautiful experience of the honey coming out so if you are going to add another brood box then wait till they filled the flow frames first and it's plenty bees in your home now that question is best depends on your practices say so around here people typically won't run a single breadbox but many parts of the world including the colder climates they like to run a couple of brood boxes so there's a bit more storage often this there's not as much pretty boxing this breeding the second one that's a bit more storage for your bass to survive the winter in the cold times also any making a question to limit swarming it definitely will help with that so if if you don't want to take a split and you don't want your hive this warm adding another brood box could be a good idea now or another super for that matter we find that the number of cells in a single brood box actually is enough for the Queen to lay so there's enough room for the Queen to lay and keep a really productive hive in a single box however some people do like to add a second one standard eight frame and yes it does so this one with six flow frames because we made our frames a bit wider for the honey storage reasons it is a eight frame length size so you can then put another eight frame links to off box on top if you want to collect some honeycomb or add another brood box to it and we also have the ten frame length size which suits seven we headed over to maths to get that right so so six flow frames seek was eight seven flow frames equals ten now having said that the standards do do vary quite a bit so you can expect sometimes to have discrepancies between box sizes and it's generally not an issue but some people get concerned about that okay I've got time for a few more questions frames are about 7% capped should she harvest before the freeze or wait until a warmer day after the freeze okay that's it that's a good question and it depends on your strategy to overwinter if you've got another breadbox oh and another honey box with honey for them to survive then that would be a good thing I'm going to have to get another jar but um I'll keep answering that question so I'll just be back in in one moment it really does depend a little bit because you may need to to leave that honey for them to survive the winter or you may be planning to sugar feed and that depends a little bit on want to manage your hive so um 70% capped if you hadn't tried any flow of honey at least harvest a frame to experience it because it's a it's a wonderful thing and leave the risk for the base or and we've got too many fake years about what to do for the overwintering bit in terms of needing to remove the Queen excluder yeah if you haven't tried it then you can try a frame or even half a frame just to to what should happen and taste what flavours coming in okay the answer is a bit more space than this fence here as you can see we've got a fence right in front and what happens is the bees tend to to put their flight path right past their heads because they can actually get a good run up and out so so best to have more space in this that the fence is only a meter and a half away here and we've also got a bush in front so I think that it if if you don't want them to fly past your head and it depends if you've got friendly bees like these are and it doesn't matter well it's less likely what of stings if they're friendly but um if you do want to stay out of the flight path of the bees then you might need to angle the hive to direct them more along the fence line and out so it's up to you but it does depend they will keep bees in all sorts of locations and just about working out what's going to work best for you on top of rooftops in their bedroom with a pipe out the window all sorts of things okay thank you very much for for watching and all your great questions if you got more you can put them in the comments below and we'll be back next week this time with something interesting to show you

Channel: Flow Hive

Views: 97,394

Rating: 4.8778386 out of 5

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

Id: 0UMyWfxe2NI

Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 22 2018