I’m planning on installing a new queen tomorrow (will triple check to make sure there is not an existing queen). I have 2 boxes with a flow super on top. There are so many opinions on where to place her. Some say at the top, some say at the bottom (it’s going to be in the 50s still at night so I don’t think the bottom is a good idea). I was thinking of placing her between two center frames at the top of the bottom box. So basically in the middle of the hive. Also, do you hang your cage or just wedge it between the two frames? I’m trying to take in all suggestions and go from there. This will b ..read more

Purely for your enjoyment April 8th, 2024, from Leander, Texas, U.S.A.! 1:33 PM and everyone is racing back home! Bee Behavior during Total Solar Eclipse, April 8th, 2024. 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic ..read more

Hi there! Brand new keeper here - San Francisco Bay Area. Short recap: received and built/stained/painted FlowHive 2, 7 frame, about 1.5 months ago. Package bees installed 2.5 weeks ago. I have done two inspections - first at 7 days, second at 15 days. Question: I noticed during the first inspection, where the bees were building comb, the comb was “thick”. Meaning I had concerns that as they filled additional frames, there would not be the required room to move between the frames for the bees. On the second inspection, this remained true, but they do seem to fit. Whether this bee (ahem) becaus ..read more

So this is my third year beekeeping and I have two hives. One of them threw a swarm. Unfortunately I caught this swarm very late because it was very well hidden, this was 3.5 weeks ago. I didn’t check the parent hive of that swarm for brood because the weather had been bad and I didn’t expect them to swarm. So I don’t know if they had brood or larvae when they swarmed. It has been some time and I still don’t see any new eggs or brood in the parent colony. They have made some queencells at the bottom of the frame and at least one was filled with an almost mature queen larva but the cell got rip ..read more

We got a medium as a second brood box and have read we can plane it so we can use the original FH roof since it’s a bit smaller than the telescopic roof. Please advise how much and how far down we should trim the box? Thank you. 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic ..read more

Hi FlowHive community. We bought a flowhive 2 and we have painted the roof and oiled the outside . On our second coat now but we’re wondering if we have to do the inside too? TIA 2 posts - 2 participants Read full topic ..read more

Hi, I have a roof assembly problem. It’s the side rails. I either have two lefts or two rights. See picture. 2 posts - 2 participants Read full topic ..read more

Hi, tomorrow i am putting my bees in the hive for the first time! And i was wondering if anyone had any tips and tricks. Any advice would be much appreciated. Also what time in the morning do you think is best to put my bees in the hive? Thank you so much! Laura 2 posts - 2 participants Read full topic ..read more

Help! Sadly, I have found that my Flow Hive experienced a dead-out over the winter. All signs point to the bees likely dying after a very sudden drop to negative 15 degrees (F) for a period of several weeks in January. I have since added a new nuc to the brood box, but have found mold in the flow frames. Some of the frames still have quite a bit of capped honey mixed with uncapped, molded cells. Obviously I’ll have to manually clean out the flow channels. I’m wondering what I should do with the honey and if I need to attempt to clean out the uncapped cells, or if the new bees will take care of ..read more

I live in France and it was impossible to get hold of a nuc on langstroth/flow compatible frames. So I picked up my dadant nuc last week, and we built a collar to lift the flow hive up to accommodate them. We were able to carefully balance the dadant frames in the hive and left them to it. I just did my first (minor) hive inspection and they seem to be doing well - they’ve started to build on the flow frames and I could see lots of brood etc. So my question is, what are my best options for moving out the dadant frames so I just have the flow frames in the brood box? And what would be good timi ..read more