Genuinely awesome new invention

Dan O. said:
If you look at the hive in the article it is two parts. The lower section is the brood chamber where most of the bees live, where the queen lays eggs and the larvi grow up in their own little cells. The upper section is all excess honey storage. In the fall on a regular hive, the upper section is removed and the bees proceed to store honey in the brood chamber for their winter reserve. If the bees don't have enough stores to last through the winter it is necessary to feed them sugar water until the honyflow begins in the spring.

To keep the queen from laying eggs in the honey supers, it is typical to install a queen excluder between the brood chamber and the supers. The queen excluder is simply a metal grate with gaps that the worker bees can fit through and the queen cannot. If you leave the queen excluder and honey supers on over the winter, the worker bees will move up through the excluder as they consume the stores and the queen will be left behind and freeze without the warmth of the cluster.

This gadget therefore must be removed in the fall like you would any honey super. It's advantage is that you can extract honey throuout the summer without disturbing the hive.
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Ahh. Thank you. Interesting!

Hans
 
Puppycow said:
Thanks Dan O.

Glad someone here actually knows a thing or two about this business. This is fascinating.
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That is it about this forum. No matter what the question, someone is sure to know the answer. In the rare case where this is not true, someone will know where to find the answer. This thread is one such example of the former.
 
If anyone's interested, I found some cool bee facts on this page:

http://www.bbka.org.uk/learn/general_information/life_in_the_hive

Some of the facts that impressed me:

Does the queen ‘rule’ the colony?
No, the queen is simply an egg-laying machine.
The queen bee has a smaller brain than a worker bee.
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Why is there only one queen?

It is not understood (by man) why bees will only tolerate one queen but any attempt to introduce a second queen results in her death. If a queen dies unexpectedly during the summer the bees are able to make an emergency queen from eggs younger than 3 days old.
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How long does a bee live?
In the summer a worker bee only lives for about 40 days. As no young are raised over the winter months, the workers born in the autumn will live until the following spring. A queen can live up to 5 years however for the beekeeper a queen is past her prime in her third year.
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How do bees share out all the jobs in the hive?
When a bee is born it’s first job is to clean out the cell in which she was born. Jobs are then allocated on the basis of age.

Duties of Worker Bees
1-2 days - Cleans cells and keeps the brood warm
3-5 days - Feeds older larvae
6-11 days - Feeds youngest larvae
12-17 days - Produces wax, Builds comb, Carries food, Undertaker duties
18-21 days - Guards the hive entrance
22+ days - Flying from hive begins, Pollinates plants, Collects pollen, nectar and water.
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Bees are very interesting. In a way, a bee-hive can be seen as a meta-organism (if such a word exists).

Hans
 
ApolloGnomon said:
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I've tried plastic foundation and have not had much luck getting the bees to rebuild on it after the first use. This stuf will probably be similar.
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And that's where the rubber hits the proverbial road - do the bees like it? Only time will tell. Hipsters should eat it up. Backyard bees are the new backyard chickens. If this thing really works it'll sell millions.
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Well, the latest buzz says that they'd been developing this thing for a decade, so I guess time did tell.
 
Generally speaking if you have to feed bees sugar syrup in the spring, it's probably because you made a mistake and hadn't left them enough honey in the fall. That's why most beekeepers (in the US, particularly in the north) maintain a permanent 2-deep-section hive, and add honey supers above these boxes only when the permanent sections of the hive are nearly full. The bees will lay brood in both deep sections, but will also use much of the upper deep for honey storage; this honey is basically left for the bees and never extracted. It is almost always enough food to last the colony until the spring flow begins.

Lately some beekeepers are starting to use 3 medium-sized sections instead of 2 deep sections for the permanent parts of the hive, because the smaller boxes are easier to manipulate when full of food and brood than deep boxes, especially for older people. But whichever boxes are used, the "flow" super would be added to the top of the hive like a regular super.

Evidently a queen excluder isn't needed when using this gadget because the cells are of an incorrect size that queens will not lay any eggs in, although workers will fill them with honey. So there's that. However, I'm a little dubious about claims that using this hive part is "less stressful for the bees". For one thing, the hive needs to be taken apart occasionally anyway, as part of normal hive inspection and management. For another, the "flow" supers need to be removed at the end of the year, and doing so requires emptying them of bees in exactly the same way that traditional supers do when they're removed for harvesting. So you're not actually causing the bees less stress, you're simply postponing the stress event until later in the year - which might not necessarily be a good thing, depending on how early a particular colony starts slowing down and consolidating for winter.
 
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Checkmite said:
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Evidently a queen excluder isn't needed when using this gadget because the cells are of an incorrect size that queens will not lay any eggs in, although workers will fill them with honey. So there's that. However, I'm a little dubious about claims that using this hive part is "less stressful for the bees". For one thing, the hive needs to be taken apart occasionally anyway, as part of normal hive inspection and management. For another, the "flow" supers need to be removed at the end of the year, and doing so requires emptying them of bees in exactly the same way that traditional supers do when they're removed for harvesting. So you're not actually causing the bees less stress, you're simply postponing the stress event until later in the year - which might not necessarily be a good thing, depending on how early a particular colony starts slowing down and consolidating for winter.
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If you time it right, you don't have to disturbed the bees much.

In the early winter, on a cold day, the bees will cluster at the bottom of their honey store so there won't be any bees in the top section and it can just be removed. Later in the winter, as they have consumed much of their stored honey, the cluster will be closer to the top of the hive and the bottom super can be removed for cleaning and inspection. In the early spring, the cleaned or new brood chamber can be added on top of the hive. Followed by honey supers as they draw and fill them.

Alternatively, if you don't mind extracting honey from old brood comb, you can follow a build down strategy where new supers are always added to the bottom of the stack and the full supers are taken off the top. Some say that the bees prefer to build down.

Normally though, to access the bottom super it is necessary to unstick unstack the whole hive which disturbs them considerably. But with a hive lifting tool it would be possible to raise the whole hive to add or remove the bottom super without taking anything apart. Less strain on the bees and less strain on the beekeeper's back.

The "flow" super would top the stack in either case.


The bees really are the most efective cleaners. But just setting stuf out for them to clean can attract other insects, wasps come to feed on the bees and the activity can trigger raiding between the bee hives. Something I want to try is making a back door on the hive that can be attached to an enclosed space for the cleaning activity.
 
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So does anyone who raises bees plan to get one of these to try it out?

If so, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
 
Another issue with the "flow" hive that hasn't been brought up is how to know when the honey is ripe. When the bees bring in the nectar it is mostly water. The bees add enzymes and dry the nectar to exactly the right water content so it is too dry to mold and too wet to crystallize. When the honey is perfect, they cap the cell with wax to preserve it. Beekeeper's know that they can remove the supers when most of the cells have been capped. With the "flow" hive, the honey needs to be removed before it is capped. Capped cells won't flow out and the bees won't know that they would need refilling if they did drain.
 
Dan O. said:
Another issue with the "flow" hive that hasn't been brought up is how to know when the honey is ripe. When the bees bring in the nectar it is mostly water. The bees add enzymes and dry the nectar to exactly the right water content so it is too dry to mold and too wet to crystallize. When the honey is perfect, they cap the cell with wax to preserve it. Beekeeper's know that they can remove the supers when most of the cells have been capped. With the "flow" hive, the honey needs to be removed before it is capped. Capped cells won't flow out and the bees won't know that they would need refilling if they did drain.
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Answering my own post:

The frames in the flow hive are made of clear plastic so it is possible to see when the bees fill and cap the outermost cells. If an observation window is added to the side of the hive, the bees on the outside frame can also be observed. When the flow switch is activated, each cells splits vertically so the honey flows down at the back end of the cell.

It's not clear how the honey flows out of the unspilt and capped front of the cells but the bees supposedly notice that the cells are not full and will uncap them, repair the damage caused by the splitting and refill the cells. I suppose that even if all the honey isn't extracted, enough is taken so the bees can continue harvesting.

Now, the bad news: Apparently these flow frames cost over $50 each. By comparison, the same size plastic frame and foundation is only $2 each or you could get 50 wooden frames (unassembled) and 50 sheets of beeswax foundation for only $70.
 
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