[Sr. Tanya]

A friend mentioned something about a flow hive. I looked at the link they gave me to get a little idea about what it was.

Does anyone know the pro's or con's of this type of hive? Has anyone tried this and found it efficient and/or workable?

 

[squarepeg]

no personal experience with it st, here's a link to an older thread:

https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?317311-Flow-Hive-Firsthand-Experience

 

[Sr. Tanya]

Thanks "squarepeg" don't think I'll be getting into that anytime soon. Though, I do like to check out new ideas.

 

[rtaylor]

I tried Flow Hive my first year beekeeping. I didn't have any success in them using it. I chalked it up to it being a first year hive and adding the Flow after the spring nectar flow. Last year I tried it again on my strongest hive and even painted wax on all the frames. I also tried baiting the bees up into it with sugar water and then with honey. They ended up filling about 10 cells with honey so it was a total bust for me. I did like that fact that there are glass windows where you can easily look in.

 

[Cloverdale]

My brother has one he is in California. It took about 2 years for the bees to wax the Flow supers. He does like the hive though.

 

[dr4ngas]

Try this you tube channel "Frederick Dunn". He does Q&A videos about Beekeeping. Fred uses the flow hive and has some videos about the use of the hives and how they work, give him a try.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVmPauAlOLKR9QZzFKn-uFw

 

[Cloverdale]

A friend mentioned something about a flow hive. I looked at the link they gave me to get a little idea about what it was.

Does anyone know the pro's or con's of this type of hive? Has anyone tried this and found it efficient and/or workable?

Michael Bush is very knowledgeable regarding Flow Hives.

 

[Sr. Tanya]

Cloverdale and dr4ngas- Thanks for the information.

 

[JConnolly]

I saw this somewhere: A flow hive is a very well engineered product that superbly does exactly what it was engineered to do — separate the new unsuspecting beekeeper from his money.

 

[Opman711]

I’m probably going to get a lock of pushback for this comment but I have one set of authentic FLOW frames and 2 more sets of the knockoff China FLOW frames that run around $100 a set on Amazon. I’ve had success with them all. It takes about a month for the bees to seal the cells before they begin to fill them the first time you add the frames to the hive. But after that initial sealing they fill the cells right away after you empty the frames. Just my 2 cents on them. I don’t want to take anything away from FLOW because what they engineered was ingenious, but I wanted to experiment with the knockoff and much cheaper frames and it worked.

 

[Cloverdale]

We bought a Flow Hive without frames at a garage sale for $5.00 about 3 years ago. I bought the knock-off frames from Walmart. This year I’ll set it up. Thanks for the info. There is a Flow Hive forum; I believe Michael Bush is on that.