Tips and tricks - Flow Hive 2

so this morning we're going to be covering tips and tricks with your flow hope to and I'm going to start from the bottom of the hive and work our way up and hopefully you'll learn something about the setup of your hive I've got a lot of people setting up hives at the moment so I want to make sure everybody's aware of the tips and tricks that make things easier so starting from the base I'll just lift off that blue box here we have the screen bottom board so this is your screen bottom board here and inside here is your pest management tray in the bottom here it's actually had a little bit of oil in it already I'm using it to catch beetles now we'll start at the very bottom if you're wanting to get your hive level these legs make it easier and the reason why you want to make your hive level is if you're drawing natural comb then you want the bees to draw it downwards and not cross onto the next frame so put the level bubble at the top like this and you see that's almost level they're in that position so if I wanted to get it nice and level I would then lift this side and just adjust the leg like so and you could find you then can get it perfectly level lifting the hive and spinning it is usually the easiest way rather than getting at a spinner so there's a good tip now when it comes to the venture cover this ditions so when you're starting the hive and especially if it's a bit cool i'll put the level bubble at the top or the vents at the bottom rather and that means that this here comes into contact with the handle there and limits ventilation if you turn it up the other way then a lot of ventilation comes up pass this handle area and up under your screen so you've got two positions of ventilation there and if you want to take the tray all the way out then you've got also there's three options there depending on how you want to assist your bees now it's a good idea to to screw these all the way in so it holds everything nice and tight like that if they went out what you could find is it could be sitting out like that providing a gap for bees to actually crawl up into that tray area so you want to make sure it's nice and tight by screwing in your elf screws so they're holding things in place okay next with the assembly process I have seen somebody put this screen the wrong way up so if you have a look here it's got a slope and that slope is designed so water sheds at the front if it blows in the entrance of the hive so you want that sloped downwards if you put it this way up it'll actually obstruct the bees from getting into the hive and instead they'll go into your tray area which will really be an issue so make sure the screen bottom wall is that way up with this slope so water's going to flow out of the entrance if it blows in a bit in the rain and the landing boards also sloped so when you put your landing blood on it's sloping down ways like that so there's a few tips on your base setup we also got the level in the side here which ideally you want the bubble sitting between the two so lift a little bit and perfect harvesting level is close to three degrees so having the bubble in the middle will give you that without having to think about it that's it there okay next goes on your brood box now doesn't particularly matter which way you want to start whether you're using foundation in the frames or whether you're using naturally drawn comb with foundationless frames like this but make sure you put the comb guide in the top if you're planning to use foundationless but don't put it in if you want to use foundation sheets so that's what the base can use as a guide to hang they came from and if you've got questions as we go put them in the comments and we're going to answer a lot of questions after I just go through the tips and tricks of putting together your hive and have a stinging search I say next thing make sure your frames are squeezed tightly together when you install your base reason being if you have a big gap like this the bees will build some random comb in this area it's a bit of a mess to clean up and that can be can be a bit annoying especially if there's brood in that area so squeeze them together put the space on the edges it seems like there's a generous amount on the edges but you'll appreciate that after a while what tends to happen is that the wax builds up on the frames and they ended up sitting it out and taking up most of that space after some time squeeze them together and the spacing are we much better for the beasts to draw the natural comb next is your excluder now I have seen people put this in the wrong place in the hive it goes directly on top of your brood nest if you've got a second brood it would go on top of the second brood box so basically what the job of this is is to keep the Queen out of your honey collection area so the aperture of these of this grid here is 4.3 millimeters which is fine for a worker to get through but the Queen cannot get through that and lay eggs in your flow frames if you are experimenting with no excluder make sure you you check that the Queen doesn't lay in flow frames it is very queen specific one Queen will one Queen won't so that's up to you if you want to experiment without using the excluder next on top of that or actually one little tip while you're inspecting your brood nest you can use the harvesting shelf brackets as a frame rest and I'll show you how to do that now it's a case of loosening a couple of these screws and the way you put the bracket on there's a little keyhole there over the keyhole I find it easiest to put it over start out wide like that in turn and then you've got a nice tight bracket if it's not nothing to it adjust your screw so this is really neat as you're inspecting your brood you can put frames on here and that gives you enough space in your hive to then start working the rest of your frames as you inspect and move them across like this so you can fit a maximum of three there which is plenty and it's a really handy little frame rest okay now the next thing you're going to do is take a look at the super if you've got questions put them in the comments and we'll get to answering those meanwhile we'll run through a few more tips and tricks we have a lot of people people that getting there supers on at the moment and installing their B's etc so if you've got any questions let's see if we can get them out it next I'll take those shelf brackets off because we'll use them for the harvesting shelf as well if we get your super I'm going to run through a few tricks the first one is if you remove the rear door it makes a very nice handle so people do often ask how come there's no handle it's because there's a really great one as soon as you remove this door it's nice and generous and makes it easier to lift if it is full of honey then they can get quite heavy if you have issues with your back then get someone to help you especially with the larger sized hive next thing we want to do if you're putting your Supra on top and you may have noticed I miss the excluder just then so we'll put that back in place excluder goes on top and then your flow super okay so the next thing you want to do is make sure your frames are ready for the bees to to actually use so let's say we'll pull out a frame here and perhaps it's been in shipping and it's been the boxes been bashed around upside down if you have a look some of the frames you can see right here some of the parts have moved in transport now the bees aren't going to fill these areas where the cells are in open position so you will need to reset the frames ready to go before the bees can use them and to do that you simply take out the the cap we're going to put the frame back in and the top slot here put the key in and all you need to do is turn it like that and that frame is ready for the base of years so that's a good look good tip there and an essential thing to do and make sure you might don't miss that step there's a little tongue here if if the end cell is left up you'll actually find that you won't be able to put the cap in properly and it'll sit out wide now we did that to remind you to close the cells because we found in the beginning when we were we were inventing the flow hive we would leave leave a frame open accidentally and then the bees couldn't use it so it won't work to remind you about cells in the middle that have moved in transport but when you get a harvest they'll remind you to put the key in the top slot and turn it before finishing your harvest and packing up and putting your cap in so go and do that to each frame make sure all the cell's pushed towards the bottom next thing in your setup you want to make sure all the frames are pushed towards the front reason being if you find that some are back and some are forward you can get issues where frames are overlapping here and even bees might escape you want to create a really nice window across here using the end of your flow frames we've got questions put them in the comments ok so what you want to do is there's a screw in the end here which you can adjust and that or just it make it so that's just a little bit of rattle room but not too much and that'll push the frame towards that direction if you're doing a lot of these and you don't want to wind up the screws and you can use something like the comb guide or a little stick across here and that will also push them forwards in that direction and do the same job okay there's a few few good tricks there now somebody asked question recently will the B's be harmed when I harvest say the the answer is we put a lot of a lot of effort a lot of time and thought into that so that the bees would be safe even if they are down the cells obviously it's better to harvest when the cells are full and capped and that way you don't have these down cells but you can't guarantee that you might find sections of the comb where there's there's completely dry areas and there's B down those cells and when you harvest that the what can happen is the bees can be down the cells and they'll explain what we did to make sure that the base of the okay in that case so if you have a look here again you can see you can see I'll just put the key in and close these cells off so looking in this area and it's a little bit hard to see with the camera angles what we've done is we've provided little gaps so the parts don't meet so for bees down the cell there and the cell moves then that there's a wax area you can see a little v-shape there that's left and what that means is if the bee then puts a leg or a wing through that area and you close the frame again when you're finished then there's a gap there for the beasts to pull their leg or wing out and at worse they could get stuck in a bit of their own waxed the wax that's used to join to complete the cells and the other bees will help her out so that was an important step in making it safe for when the bees are down the cells some great questions so put them in the comments and we'll get to answering those and meanwhile I'll run through a few more tips and tricks with the hive make sure you put your caps in ants will move into these areas if you don't have the caps the lower caps and the upper caps in place and that can get annoying and a bit of a mess to get those ants out one tip is you can blow some cinnamon powder into those areas if the ants have gotten in there and they're staying put so they don't really like cinnamon powder you can blow the ants out throw some cinnamon in there and once they've all moved out you can then put your cap back in another tip for ants is you can use this leg area by putting grease on there or Vaseline on these leg bolts I would recommend a white Vaseline rather than a grease just because it doesn't get so messy and that will act as a bit of a barrier and deter ants from climbing up these flow hive two leg bolts and onto your hive however if you've got foliage touching the hive it won't work so you have to clear foliage away you can see many of these hives have foliage touching them here you'd have to clear around if you wanted to stop the ants using the foliage as a ladder to get up onto the hive okay next is your inner cover now your inner cover a plug in it here so the reason why we put that there is you can choose whether Bay's able to get into the roof cavity now it can be fun for a while to let the bees build up a whole lot of comb in the roof area but it's also a bit of a mess to clean up so it's up to you I finally like to put the cap in and keep the Beast and making the honey in here where you can easily harvest it and not have to do the whole comb clean and you're beginning it can be nice to collect a bit of a honeycomb in that roof area and if the bees are really building up you could take that cap out and experiment with that you can put a Tupperware container or Jo or something over that area and they could feel a more confined space with their natural honeycomb also when it comes to the roof if you want to - if you live in a high rainfall area tip is you can coat the underside of the roof as well and also use some sealant in the joints when you assemble the roof and that will provide a really strong weather proofing for your hive now when you put your roof together it's also a good idea and this is a bit of a thing that can happen when people are assembling their roof I've got some nice set instructions on how to do this but you can use the inner cover as a square as you build the perimeter for your shingles to go on and the way you do that is when it's flat on the table you screw one of these wing screws right in and push this over into the corner to hold square while you put your shingles on so there's a good tip for roof building to keep it nice and square okay if it's nice and square it's easier to get your refund later then you've got these wing screws on the side which shall hold your roof on if you're living in a higher wind area they're pretty good they don't blow off even with them open unless the wind gets really strong but basically you can screw them in and it'll lock the roof onto your box whereas the bays tend to stick the boxes together and they're quite heavy so the hive itself doesn't really blow apart unless you have a hurricane okay next is the harvesting shelf brackets and I'll show you how that works now and some tips on putting them together so what we design here is multiple positions for you to put your shelf brackets on and quite a lot of people ask us weird where's my shelf and the answer is here it is it's the rear door so that becomes your shelf so there's a tip there now you can either you can connect it here like this which will give you a nice shelf for for putting a smaller jar now to to adjust it so I'm going to pick the same screw on this side here and just wind it out a bit like that and it's easiest if you put the logo facing up like that slide it over the screw and then turn it so I've made that a little bit too tight so what I'm going to do is just loosen it off a tiny bit and that should be about right - then turn it into position and you've got a nice tight shelf bracket that when you put your new door on will become a good shelf for this size yeah yeah so then once you've chosen your frame to harvest the tube goes in now you see there's a little tongue here that's an important little design piece if you have a look in here it looks like we've just done some poor manufacturing and left a gap at the bottom but that's actually on purpose it's called the lake back point where if honey's been building up in there or your harvested and you you want to pack up and leave the last remaining chips for the base there's some little notches on this cap here where the base can actually fit their tongue up into that area and you can actually watch them licking the last bits of honey and reusing them so make sure this tongue goes into the bottom when you harvest and that will clean out the wax they normally put in that leak back point now I didn't wind out the screws I see that movement so that's the reason why you'll want to make sure you've adjusted the screws at the back of the frame if you're going for a larger sized shelf then you can move your shelf brackets down if you want to to get a whole jar you could you could put it right down here and what that would do is give you enough space to harvest a whole frame into a jar just adjust this side as well if you've got any questions put them in the comments and we'll answer and there's so many fantastic questions don't be afraid to ask hopefully myself or someone else can answer if somebody if people are asking questions and you know the answer and I put them in the comments it's fantastic to see the community helping each other after all the experienced beekeepers can pass on their knowledge to those new Baker's then that's the way we can continue to learn over generations and keep a wonderful hobby of beekeeping going but also make sure there's enough skills and knowledge to keep our bees that have become such an important part of our agricultural system so now we have a half sink shelf right down here which can see a big jar like this and a two-liter jar like this will fit a whole frame occasionally overflow but normally you'll be able to fit a full frame of honey in this jar and there you go if you got any questions put them in the comments and we'll answer yeah great see good morning everyone there's some great questions coming in Nikki's wanting to know if you've got your gloves on and you're trying to pull out the white tray any tips there finding a little bit hard trying to grab that tray with your gloves on okay so that's the tray under here that they're talking about generally you'd be servicing that tray when you were I'm not pulling apart the hive I guess so the idea is you can do that without having to wear too much protection but obviously I would encourage anybody who's concerned to wear their gloves so let's see if we can work that out if anybody's got it got it trick you can perhaps use your your tool like this just to get underneath and get the tray out to that area there and it can slide out if you don't have your gloves on then you can just use your your fingers like that great great will will rot wants you to really mention cedar I guess how important the brood boxes for your flow hive and then it's not just about getting honey out of your hive that it's really important to look after your brood absolutely so our flow frame technology makes the harvesting easier and and gentle a gentle process for the bees and it's something that my father and I worked on for a very long time of course looking after bees doesn't change we're in a few features to make it easier but looking after your bees is the same as any other beehive in the world and you do need to get in there and inspect your home for pests and disease make sure you're looking after them it's only when you learn to look after your bees that then you get the amazing reward of of harvesting honey so really important thank you for your comment great Phillip Phillip in Houston Texas he started as nuke about six weeks ago checked it last week and have tons of bees and honey they were all building out the front of his brood box so he immediately put the super' on is there a possibility of maybe putting the super on too early or the the time to put your super on is when all of the frames are full and there's a lot of bees if you're getting a beard of bees at the and it's probably a great sign that you've got a good healthy number of bees they'll beard for two reasons one is if there's so many bees that it's too crowded to maintain the ventilation inside the hive the next one is if it's just really hot then bees will get out and and get more space in the hyperventilation but also make sure that there are enjoying that evening air typically at the end of the day you get that big bee beard at the front but it does mean you've got a lot of bees in your hive and a great time to put on your super give them some more space to work and get them hopefully waxing up the frames ready to store the honey when the nectar flow comes so there's some more tips around that as well if that's it this is a great topic actually so I'll just take it off the super and let's look at that again say what you want is let's say you've installed your your new kin here or package have a look and make sure that on each frame they've completed their comb first you don't want to be putting on the super if they haven't actually finished completing those frames especially in the colder regions because what you've been doing is slowing them down a bit by making it harder for them to keep their hive warm when when there's so much space but not enough bees to really keep the hive warm so you could have a look at that and if you do notice that they haven't completed all the frames then you can take the suit off again depending on how cold the nights are still in your area great questions seated just on that brood frame now that you're in your box Katherine's asking can you use foundation sheets for honeycomb or do you have to use the naturally drawn comb you can certainly use foundation sheets these frames with the holes in the side you can whack some wire in a conventional way I used to do a lot of that with all of my hives when I was producing honey on small-scale on small-scale commercial beekeeping and I got really sick of it actually and I'm so glad to go to the naturally drawn comb because we don't need to spin these frames in a centrifuge they don't need the wire support and the bee skin jobs which they do a great job of and I believe it has some health benefits one you're not importing wax from other hives into your home wax should be sterilized if you buy foundation sheets but just I like to let the bees do it themselves so they can ought another thing there is they can size the cells how they want say that is said to have a health benefit to if they size the cells exactly the size they want to raise their brood but it does mean a little bit more work in the hive when the hive is first starting because if you dump a package in here you're gonna want to check it next week and the week after to make sure they're building straight on the count guide so if they start going crossways you want to catch that early bend them back on to the comb guide get it get a few nice straight frames and then they'll follow suit from there most of the time they they will hang off the comb guides it important to do that check so while it's less work doing you're doing your wax and wiring and putting your foundation and so on it could be a little bit more work in the hive but I enjoyed that process of really watching what your bees are doing and there's a chance there to check as well that your Queens happy and healthy and laying which is a nice thing to do early on to make sure your hive is set to to keep building and expanding and and getting to the point where you can put your super on Troyes he wants to harvest this weekend but he also wants to add a second brood box so what do you recommend cedar should he harvest first or add the brood box Pierce if the Bey's are building up to that point where you're adding a second brood box and I would certainly be harvesting first because it'll it'll make it easier to lift off your box you can harvest all that honey and it'll be easier to lift that box off to put your your blue box on having said that you can just lift it off put another brood and keep going it's up to you if you're a little tip there if you're doing naturally drawn comb like this with the foundationless frames and this comb guide then bees like to to do that at the bottom of the higher because they tend to to start at the top of the frame and work their way down whereas if you put a box like this on top of another brood box you might find that stuck and get a very wonky wavy comb and it all turns into a big mess so if you're going to use naturally drawn comb then put this below your existing brood box so what we're talking about there for those that are near to beekeeping adding a whole second brood if you're using foundation it doesn't matter whether it goes above or below if you're so another thing you can do if you want to mix it up a little bit is take some frames from your bottom box and checkerboard it in the top so you could have a frame with new one frame from the bottom new one like that and that would give the bees some great guides for them to build straight frames as well and therefore you wouldn't need to put the hot box underneath so there's a few ideas there I've got a shout out to Peter Cox he's one of our flow hive ambassadors - Australia he's coming in saying he's having some cold winter mornings and a few days of rain so hey Peter see that someone was asking the little round caps where you put the tube and on the flow frames a little bit concerned because it's a bit there's a bit of propolis honor and they've bit concerned about taking them out and worried about snapping them any tips on getting those caps out oh you won't snap them they're made a very strong material so so you can use this point here I'll just show you that now okay so if fat like that they're quite strong you shouldn't break them if you do let us know okay great questions keep them coming yeah great one here's the note here's another one the video may have just been interrupted but I know we're back on great Anne's asking any tips when you're putting your last flow frame back into your super when it's full of all the B's she's fighting it really really tight and just curious if there's any hints on adding that last flow frame into your super okay that's a great one okay let's cover that now so you wrap the frames back in especially if it's really tight across here now the way I do it it's important to have all the frames pushed to the front so that will help if you've got if you've adjusted the screws at the back here or put a shim a piece of wood in the back here to stop the frames moving backwards otherwise the frames get all overlapped and it gets all a bit tricky at the front let's just cover removing a frame so you get the chisel end of your tool and you put it underneath this edge here and you lever it up that's the first thing to do that really stack there's another lever point at the bottom here so you can loosen it up by doing that and that once you've got that up a little bit you can put your hand there go to the other side using the J end and hook it and labor it out like that okay there we go that one's been used this flow frame so you can see the beads have just started to use this frame and if you look in that area you can see I'm starting to wax up the cells and join their wax bridges across the gaps we were talking about earlier so putting the frame back in to answer your question I have to put the front in first like this good idea not to have the cover on because you want to watch here to make sure as this area contacts here you don't squash bees so what I find it easy easiest to do is start the frame on that angle and then roll it back into the hope that way you're already between these two frames and let it drop down and notice as it drops it's now in between the two frames and creating that nice window there sometimes if you've been pulling these frames out and maneuvering them a bit you'll need to make some room first so let's just go through that again so you might need to get your pho and just pull them across like this to make sure they're all pulled across make sure they're all forming a nice window as well so that they're all over at the edge before you start then in like this and down trying to train to keep it forward between the two frames what happens if it's back a little bit when you start like that and you're not right up against the wood if you back a little bit like that it can actually jump behind if you see this become a little closer you can see it jumping behind that one and then it gets in a bit of a tangle and can get kind of stuck behind the other one so that's the reason why you want to start it off sliding down the wood here like that and we roll it around and that keeps your spacing as you drop it in cedar with it you've got the flow frame out there just wondering couple of people just wondering heading off those wires are actually tied enough on the flow frame or do they need to be adjusted so if the wires have gotten less on your frames then the ich they can be adjusted and we've got some videos showing you how to do that so the bees will wax them down and things which does help but let's pick one that's C that's tight and this one's actually a bit a bit loose which it's if they're both really loose then what can happen is the frame will bow a bit the idea of the wires is they're stopping the frame actually as that the weight comes on from the honey turning into a bit of a banana shape so it is good if they're nice and tight so what you can do and I'll show you how to do that now it's nice to be on a bench to do this but let's see if we can do it right here on top of the hive is you can put some twists like you see in the wire to tighten it up now the you could use a butter knife works quite well let's see how we go with tool here and what you're trying to do is get it out of the groove at the front and this is going to be and starting to climb the face there so once you've got in in that position you're going to need to hold your frame otherwise it'll fall apart so you don't want to let go of this wire in this process work out which way you're going to twist in this case I'm going to be twisting anti-clockwise to get another twist on that wire stop taking the wire off I've given it a twist and now I'm going to put it back on by sliding it over the front again moving it down towards the bottom now this is where if you have a butter knife you can put it in this area and assist that being pulled down into position and you want to get it down so it clicks in the position like that the same on the other side and now you've got a tighter wire the other ends a little bit different we have a an ability to there's a few notches here so you can just get your little screwdriver or butter knife under here and jump it up another notch to tighten this bottom one as well great questions Peters Peters asking is there anything you need to do see that if you just want to add a flow hive super to a standard Langstroth hive he's talking about is Langstroth brood box yep okay is there anything you need to do the main consideration is the slope of the hive if you stick a box like this on any normal beehive the bees will get up there and start filling it provided there's lots of bees around it lots of bees in your hive and lots of nectar around for those bees to go and get the but what you can find if you're using a standard bottom board is you can't have the hive tilted back like this or the water will run in and pull inside the hive so there's a little bit of a consideration there so what people usually do in that case is either spin it around so they're harvesting on the front side where the bees are which isn't nearly so fun it can get in quite a mess because all the bees are coming home when you're trying to harvest or you can just tilt the hive when it's time to harvest but I find that annoying as well because you're you you're going to go through that beautiful harvesting process and instead you end up messing around at the front trying to chalk it up give yourself that harvesting angle that you need to make sure honey's flowing out of the hive so it is much nicer to have a screen bottom board where you can leave the slope there with that without water pooling inside the hive but nevertheless you can certainly certainly do it you just need to either change the slope of the hive when you go to harvest or harvest at the front side and maintain a slope to the forward direction like a lot of conventional B hosti great see someone's just asking what the landing board there is that the lane is it what's making it slow basically so that the slope is is in this case the the legs creating the slope so the way you adjust it is you get under here and you spin this leg here and let's have a look at the level on the side you want the level bubble in the middle and that will give you your three degree harvesting angle we did that because we found a lot of people were harvesting with their hive slope in the wrong direction and spilling a lot of honey into their hive so so this has helped a great deal to make a base that some has the levels in it great few people interested in that level somewhat I think you might have just done it though stone wanting a side view of the hive to show how much tilt there actually is so it's about three degrees you can use an app on your phone if you've got our classic to get your three degree harvesting angle or you could go find level and just come up at the front about 25 millimetres and that'll and an inch and that'll give you a three degree slope theorem it's really way to collect bee pollen from the flow hive Sina so bee pollen is usually collected by a contraption at the entrance of your hive where the bees come in and it brushes the pollen off her legs and it falls into your collection area we haven't designed the hive to be a pollen collection so you'll have to make or buy an apparatus for collecting pollen now you should only ever collect pollen off part of your entrance because the bees do need that pollen in order to raise their brood and survive Sita can you use a propolis mat I'm not even sure what that is actually and a flow hive or can it cause issues with the flow frames so propolis mat is is basically a grid that you put in the hive and the bees ten anything that's got a kind of a gauze star grid the beads will actually put their propolis on to seal it off now if you put that on top of your flow frames I'd recommend just putting a what's called an e core a little riser around here so put some sticks of wood around here and put your propolis mat on top of that and that way you won't be gluing your propolis mat right on to the top of your flow frames so beekeepers they want to collect propolis we use those mats and then go through a process of getting the propolis off the mat and then they put it back into the hive again to collect more propolis propolis is that that firmer dark brown colored stuff that you see babies sealing up the hive with some beats it produced an enormous amount of propolis I've got a hive that'll actually get around on the outside of the hive and fill in every screw with propolis but unknown reasons is genetic thing propolis producing bees producing enormous amount of propolis and it's medicinal thing when I am when I find a whole lot of propolis in a hive obviously get a bit and chew on it it's made from the SAP of trees they're resins and it's quite a medicinal thing any advantage cedar to adding an extra brood box before you put your super I would recommend putting your super on first in this configuration reason being is if you put our brood box on you might find the bees at a second brood will will spend all the time filling up that second brood and you might miss the season so if you want to get some action on the flow frames get them to fill this first and then put your second brood box in place and that way you're much more likely to get a good harvest from your flow frames do you ever need to tie them down see the due to wind or animals or if if the conditions are getting cyclonic you might want to tie them down especially if you're an area like this where the wind could come straight up the hill now a flow high of classics before we had the the wing screws on the roof we used to tie down if the wind was forecast to be 80 kilometers an hour or more and that's when we would get the hive roofs getting blown off the hive so then we went and got the if I have to and design these little wing screws that actually hold that roof on the rest of the hive the bees will stick together with their propolis and it's heavy enough that it doesn't tend to blow away but if you've got cyclones or hurricanes then tie down your high up as well as everything else you've got honey like wax out of the flow hose so you're wanting to make things like candles so you can one way is if you get this area in the roof you can collect some natural comb by leaving this out if you go really busy colony they'll get up into this Rifco cavity and build a whole over comb then you can enjoy crush and strain and get the honey or or just simply cut it up and chew on that honey collect that wax too to build candles etc the other place you can get get honeycomb from is in your brood box typically their frames on the edge have have mostly honey and pick a time when there's no brood in them you can take one of those frames for honeycomb collection and put a new one back in the center area and that way you'll be relieving the bees by giving them a bit more space no less likely to swarm in the springtime so there's something nice to do in spring you give you a base in my room and then they're swarming tendencies do you suggest see that do you think the timber the Western redcedar hive is it is that better for a wet climate or does it not really matter as long as it's sealed so keeping a hive looking like this you're always going against nature nature wants to turn it gray and eventually start decomposing wood when it's outdoors so the Western redcedar actually has properties that keep your wood looking good for longer its natural properties resists molds and they they an oil like this will hold up a lot longer on Western redcedar than any other wood so it's a popular choice in North America and it is a is a wonderful wood it's nice and light and has that resistant quality and you can keep it looking good like this however you're gonna annoy oil every year or so to keep it looking good like that from if you want a long-lasting finish that you don't want to to bother with then you can always use a standard house paint they're made for outdoors and they will provide you the of lasting finished without having to touch it there's a beautiful hive there with some nice artwork on the side so if you've got our carrier Apollonia hive then we would certainly recommend painting it rather than the oil any tip cedar on condensation in the flow home okay condensation is a naturally occurring thing in hives and the part of the reason why you'll see it because you've got windows to actually see that it's there so sometimes you'll take off this window and you'll see a bit of condensation and that will happen when the temperature is low enough for the humid air to start collecting on the cold surfaces and the windows less insulated than the wood Pat's say you'll find that the window areas your you'll see some condensation on them and you'll also see it on the inside of your inner cover the the sort of arguments as to whether it's good or bad but in the end if you're getting excessive amounts of moisture it's really really wet in your hive wet bees in the cold isn't a good thing if you're getting a bit of condensation on the hive surfaces inside then then that's okay the bees will actually use that as a water source so there's arguments to and fro about where their content sation is good or bad but if you're getting excessive amounts then check that your your roofs not letting a whole lot of water into your hive check that you haven't got a tray full of water in the bottom sometimes when it rains a lot you can get driving rain blowing rain into this straight area so make sure you tip that water out if you've got a whole lot of water at vibrating there you know make for more condensation in the hive one thing you could try and let me know how you go is removing the tray altogether provides an unsession to evaporate great tips on the roof cedar if your if your hives got a bit may be swollen through weather weathering and you want it you need to adjust the roof you having problems putting it on any tips on making that roof go back over your hive again okay that the main reason why every can be hard to put on is if it's actually out of square so if it's square there should be enough room to get it back on well one thing that can happen actually is have a look here if if you're in a covers got a bit of water on it and sometimes this swells and the joint pops out the side that could be one thing you could look at if that's happening you could either chisel that off and get it flush again one tip if if that seems to be an issue going forward you could put a sealer on the inner cover as well to stop it swelling making it hard for you to put your very fun if you if you put your inner cover inside your roof and find that it actually is very out of square what you need to do is take off your shingles and a tip here you can put little matchsticks or twigs down the existing screw holes snap them off and square your roof up and that way when you go to screw it again the screw will find a new pathway because the old pathway has the matchstick in it and that's a way you can fix up an out of square roof so you mentioned before about oiling or painting your hives a couple of people just wondering how do you do that if you've actually if you're wanting to keep it looking nice but the it's full of bees so it's a little bit up to you how comfortable you are and I always say if you need a beekeeping wear your bee suit get yourself protected and if you feel uncomfortable get somebody to help you some people have severe allergic reactions to bees and it's really important to keep that in mind when you're working with them and then I'll say that I'm quite comfortable to put a coat on the hive with the bees in there and the bees don't seem to mind too much if you wanted to to lock your bees in you can use something like if you get out there really early in the morning with some steel wool and poke it in the entrance area or anything you've got and then you can do it without the bees actually escaping but I find even with the bees coming in and out you can give this a little bit of a rub with some sandpaper and give it a fresh coat and the bees seem to be ok with that Sita can you can we add a tray to the classic I've so we we are working on that and making the this base available with the tray it's very useful for collecting hive beetles and and also counting mites and things like that and it's also got the option of their legs so hopefully you'll see that soon as an option with a tray and the base exciting that'll make a lot of people very happy chase chase you might recognize her voice from from whenever your phone the flow hope HQ and it is is a requested item that we're working on so trace are we very happy if she can provide it also very happy sada can you ever harvest royal jelly from a from a hive without having if anyone knows the process of harvesting royal jelly put it in the comments below it's certainly not something that I have much experience in so we've got time for a couple more questions couple more great Wilson from up on the Gold Coast is just wondering what's the best way to transfer your bees from a traditional hive to a flow hive in winter okay so there would be basically getting bees out of a conventional hive and putting them into this one it's um similar to throwing bees into any other box if your boxes are old and you need to replace it etc we're basically depending on whether it's a double box or not will will affect what you do but if it's a single box all you're doing is taking the frames out of one hive and putting it into this one what I'd recommend you do is grab your existing one move it across first so the bees are D allocated to where you're going to put your new flow hive then you're in your beasts head you've got your smoker get some help if it's all new and daunting transfer those frames make sure there nice and in the box if there's a sizing change where you're going from a 10 frame length to this is an 8 frame length straw size box then there'll be two frames you need to leave out and the two frames you should choose are the ones from the edge that just have honey and no brood so you take them away and eat that honeycomb or crush and strain and put the rest of the frames in here if you've got a double box you might need to get a second brood or you might like to take a high of split at the same time and turn your double box into two hearts having said that you probably want to do that when the bees are less hungry they're quite hungry here at the moment in Australia and as winter progresses here we'll actually get some nice flowers and but for most areas as we get closer to spring would be the time to to split your hive like that I just have to mention Gavin saying that his bees are absolutely loving the flow hive they're very house and he thinks they're all having midweek parties so no social distancing there he wants to know when the temperatures dropped two to three degrees do they need to do anything to the hive to keep the bees war bees are amazing at keeping their hive one my grandfather had a high of hanging in this tree outside his window didn't even have a box around that it was just a natural high of hanging on a branch and that was in Canberra which is a place that gets very very cold in winter here in Australia and they stayed there for years this this hive would no box around them at all so bees are incredibly resourceful great at keeping themselves warm honey is the key thing they need in order to keep warm they use the energy they disconnect their wing muscles they vibrate and they're able to create heat and stay warm during those cold times you get to talk to Michael Bush he'll tell you how he digs his hives out of the snow with an open screen bottom board without even any ventilation blocker here and the bees are fine for the springtime so other people though there will insulate their hive in winter they wrap blankets around it and or some kind of panels and want to keep the hive nice and warm it really depends on on your strategy they're both options are good but the main thing is to make sure they have enough honey stores to survive and if they don't you need to feed them in order to give them those stores to survive a long cold winter I'm not an expert on long cold winters because here we are you know when winter solstice I'm actually getting a bit hot in the Sun very nice subtropical region here but if you want to know more about wintering flow hives then we do have some some videos and some material on that we also have the beekeeper org which has experts from all over the world contributing to to the beekeeper or gets an online course that we've put together which it's free to try if you want to get in there and have a look the idea was we would get their experts of the world who know more about things that we don't here to share their information and help create high quality video course in order to teach you from nothing right through to being quite knowledgeable about bees so if you want to try that get in there and have a look at the BT Borg otherwise we've got lots of videos on our YouTube channel and on our Facebook page to answer questions we've also got our forum at honey flight comdata a year honey Flay calm computing myself here thank you very much for watching and if you want to let us know what you would like us cover in a future video put it in the comments below and we'll answer those questions and hopefully show you what you need to know to get going in this fascinating pursuit in the end if we look after the bees then they'll look after us and also we'll get

Channel: Flow Hive

Views: 18,687

Rating: 4.9247651 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: sXPHfNq3NXg

Length: 60min 0sec (3600 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020