A Year of Using The Flow Hive: What We Loved, Hated, and Learned 

I've had a Flow Hive for four years and make sure that the Flow hive is above another super that the bees first fill and can use to survive over the winter. I've had wonderful honey from the Flow hive and it is so simple to harvest without disturbing the colony. I added tubing to the Flow connection tube so the honey is totally enclosed as it come from the hive and there are no yellow jackets or robbers getting into it. I have a traditional Langstroth hive as well but believe the Flow hive is easier to manage and I've been very satisfied with it.

It is best if you wait until 80-90% of the Flow frames are full and capped over by the bees before harvesting the honey. When the cells are capped over, then the moisture content should be low enough to harvest. If you are getting an overflow of honey into the hive, We recommend that instead of trying to harvest the entire frame at once, try harvesting about a third of the frame at a time. When the honey flow has reduced a fair amount, then push the Flow Key in another third and harvest. Repeat the same procedure until you harvest the last third of the frame. (You can harvest just a portion of the frame at a time). When finished you can reset the entire frame all at the same time. This should nearly eliminate any honey over flow. When resetting the flow frames after harvesting, try leaving the flow Key in the vertical position for a minute of two so that all the cells will re-align before removing the Flow Key. Hope this will help. Chuck, SE Ariz, U.S. Flow Ambassador.

Thank you for this. I had nearly convinced myself i was ready for this. Now, not so much

My name is Nancy Lee from Pemberton NJ and I have been watching you and Flow Hive from Australia for several years prior to my son surprise me with the best Flow Hive for my birthday. We used Eco Wood to treat the cedar wood from watching your video. We picked up the bees May 1st 2022 for my Flow Hive. I am very excited to have my family of bees. Well that excitement lasted only a few days. We had May showers on & off for a few days. Everyday I would go to look at the hive and bees and I noticed the brood box has a horizontal crack from one end to the other hand. The 2 triangle roof pieces of cedar is damaged from being outside only for a couple of days. I was literally in shock having my son spend soo my to getting his mom the best. Contacted the company about the damage, sent them several detailed photos and they told my son this happened because we used Eco Wood and refused to stand behind their product. The love of their product and the bees became such a heartbreak and disappointment. I have spent several months dealing with this and all I'm getting runaround and they have no intention of replacing their overpriced product. Fredrick Dunn is a podcaster from North PA who has 124K Subscribers to almost 1000 videos. This is the 1st comment that I have posted and I will do it with every single one online since you don't stand behind your overpriced garbage.

When I was young, I hated the taste of Honey, now that I am much older, I love it and I am thinking of starting out in the bee keeping industry. I've been trying to learn a lot, but the learning never stops. Thanks for your learned wisdom.

I'm an old time beekeeper and have been using flow supers in Texas for several years. The problem with the overflow out the cells is that the draining trough is full and overflowing. You can see this in the video. The way that the trough overflows is out the cells. This will happen when the whole full frame is opened at one time and the trough can't handle all the honey. To solve this is to open only a third or fourth of the frame, let it drain, then the next third, etc. I keep my bees in double deeps and only put a flow super on for the honey flow. After I drain, I take it off for the winter. You should never do a hive inspection during the honey flow and, therefore, should never need to lift a full flow super.

I love the Flow HIve and I haven't had any of the negative issues that you mentioned. It is best to wait until the flow frame is mostly capped before extracting, but if you just key open a 1/4 to 1/3 at once then you should not have much if any overflow. You can do all your brood box inspections prior to the nectar flow, so you don't need to remove a full and heavy Flow super, or extract the honey so it's not so heavy, then do your inspection. Timing is everything! Use the Flow HIve only for honey extraction and keep a separate traditional Langstroth if you want beeswax, comb or to distribute honey frames to other hives that need some extra resources for winter. In a colder, northern climate you can and should remove the Flow Super after extraction and allowing the bees to tidy up. If there is still some nectar flow then you can put a standard honey super on the hive and then leave it for the winter, or condense your hive as needed at the end of season. If you think the brood box is full and the queen has not enough space for egg laying then add another brood box before adding the Flow Super. I would suggest watching videos by Frederick Dunn and how he manages his Flow HIves in a northern climate. He has great success. My experience has all been positive and I find it amazingly easy to harvest honey and keep my hives happy. But I think many new beekeepers see the Flow HIve in action in a warm Australia and expect their experience to be the same. It looks so easy. And it is if you understand how to manage it in your location.

Wow. I was looking into these. Thank you for your honesty

Have you tried running a flow hive honey box (underneath) a brood box ? The bees don't care and it will make working (inspecting) etc. in the brood box a lot easier but you will need to put a bottom board below the flow box and still use a Queen Excluder between the boxes. Also will allow you to add a 2nd brood box on top if you need to create room for overcrowding.

This is actually really helpful, I've been trying to find detailed reviews of these flow hives. Thank you for being so detailed!!

We get cold winters in Australia especially here in Victoria. I removed my flow and put an ideal on with no excluder and they did fine. To be honest after 2 years of trying the flow frames I've removed them for good my Bees just did not like the plastic frames, tried all the tricks coating with wax etc and the results were poor. As soon as i replaced with traditional frames the bees did their thing in no time. So great for some people i guess but not for me at the moment.

Very thorough and helpful! It's a neat system. I can't wait for you to get a long hive and talk about that after using it for a while.

This will probably be our next subject for notebooking😂! I'll have to save your playlist! Thank you for the review and great info!

Tuned in and watching with my hubby! ❤ bees are so amazing. Hubbys dream lol

The flow hive is a Miracle for honey harvesting! It is Good for the beekeeper because of the ease of harvesting the honey. No removal of supers, no decaping the cells, no spinning frames in a centrifuge. When it's ready, just twist the lever on the frames and the honey starts flowing. After harvesting is complete, restore (untwist) the frames and plug the access port. Very simple. For the bees, as stated already, it is very non invasive because you don't have to remove the supers, so the bees are WAY less stressed! After harvesting, the bees will simply refill the emptied cells with honey and recap them, just as they've been doing all summer. Flowhive is MUCH MUCH better than a angstrom hive, where you have to severely stress the bees by breaking open their hive, Smoking them into a stupor, removing part of their home, then closing it up again. And you STILL have to extract the honey by hand in a long, messy process. Flowhive is SO MUCH better!

Been using flow hives for a few years. The flow needs to be harvested in place with the slow backwards for honey to flow and the bees are keeping it warm so it flows. Only open a quarter of a frame to harvest at a time. Live in a cold part of Australia.

Thanks

Thank you for the info.

Great video Heather!! I have learned so much from your channel about a variety of different things. Beekeeping is still very intimidating to me but hats off to you! It's hard to believe this is only your second year with the bees, you have a wealth of knowledge and are a great teacher!!! Best wishes as you prepare your hives for winter!! Stay safe!!!

Agreed!! Had my 1st harvest this fall. Absolutely EVERYTHING you said is truth!! Harvesting is A Heavy mess and discouraged me from inspections. I harvested inside for the same reasons.

I simply cannot heave around 10 frame boxes full of honey, etc. Thus, Flow Hives are just the thing.

If you live where you get cold winters I would remove the flow hive every fall and harvest into a large pan and then clean all crazy comb that is attached and then freeze the flow frames until spring.

Good morning Heather. Bee safe. 🐝 🐝 🍯 🍯

Great video! Beekeeping is a dream! Fresh honey for years 😘

I appreciate you Heather. Candor is in short supply these days!

I took beekeeping classes back in 2015-16. Ann Harman was my teacher, but she passed in 2020. I also took a few classes from Spikenard Bee Sanctuary in VA. That was an amazing class. I am really wanting to get back into bees, but I feel as though I forgot everything already. LOL First step is to clean up my hives. Then we will decide what is best.

Fantastic video. We saw you guys live on Old Swedes Farm the other night and are glad we did. Bees are something that we have been back and forth on numerous times for our homestead and to be honest I (Steph) thought the flow hive was a great option. So glad that we watched this video as it has answered many questions that we didn't even know we had.

i've heard that after your first harvest from those things, they never go back into proper alinement fully again. sooo good luck with that. can't wait till you go horizontal! neighboring ranch did, and the bee keeper there keeps asking "why didn't i do that sooner?" apparently lot less back pain!

I’m glad I watched this before I decided to purchase one. I’m going conventional.

Great video! 👍

Well, a very good approach to pros and cons on flow hives. Congratulations and thank you very much!

Great review! I find your logical, in-depth information invaluable and even though I’m a relatively newer subscriber, your opinions have become much more heavily weighted in my decision making than other creators.

Very cool! One day we'll get bees if not just to pollinate our garden and the honey as a bonus! Still so afraid of doing something wrong and killing the colony!

Thank you for this video. I'm going to try to get into bee keeping. I was going to buy the flow hive but I think not now. Thank you

This video is perfect. We just did the same thing last night and had the exact same experience. Luckily, we brought it in the house to extract the honey as we were taking it off to winterize the bees!! I'm so glad I found your video. Subscribed and followed as this is our first year bee keeping. We have two 8 frame regular boxes and the flow hive. We got 45 lbs between last month and last night of honey. We left about 50 lbs for them for over winter. I'm not sure what they'll need, so we put in protein packs and will put in a candy tray full of sugar with a feeding box filled with shavings for moisture control and insulation. I'm not sure how they get water over winter. We are still learning, with so much more to learn. lol ❤

Great video and great info! I've learned a lot from you this season. I'm hoping we have some bees in the next couple years. Thanks for sharing everything! Cheers!

There is so much to know about bees and beekeeping! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the Flow system. Looks like a neat gadget but there are definite limitations in the design.

Thank you, great review

I hate my Flow Hive...over priced and already falling apart here in FL...just a year old, by the way....I will stick with my Anel hives...

Hi Heather. I live in Stanthorpe QLD, Australia. Google the town and Snow. Many places in Australia experience winters. Many hives around here. But not many flow hives! Hope that info is of value. 😊

Thank you for this very honest review of the Flow-style hive. All your points are well-thought out and make lots of sense to me. I have been researching all kinds of hives and honey collection, as well as making long lists of equipment and costs. Whereas the Flow-style hive is supposed to reduce certain workload and equipment needed to be a beekeeper, it is not the "end-all, bee all" (see what I did there? lol) for a complete system.

thanks- really good and helpful video

You should be inspecting the flow frames like any other frames so you will break the comb at the bottom

If your flow frame is leaking like that it means your wires are to loose, just pop the wire off on one end and put one more twist in and replace, also if you need only a small adjustment the wires have two notches it can sit in just leaver it into the upper notch. You shouldn't need to pull it apart to correct the deviances just put the tool in the close position and turn keeping it that way for a few minutes until the peices have reseated. If you go to the flowhive channel on you tube they go through q&a once a month when they do their inspections and you can ask for trouble shooting tips live. Or just watch their back catalog where they have answered those questions regularly, although the comb building on the underside is a new one on me. I have been watching the flowhive channel for years and am now in the process of buying a flow hive now that my brother has a property it can go on with a already available bee tree that needs removing..

I have never kept bees myself & probably never will but I’ve been learning so much about them & I thought this might be helpful for someone: I heard Queen excluders can wear away at the wings of your workers & shorten their lives because they can’t fly well. That said I get why you’d use one, capped homey in a comb that once had brood in it doesn’t look great. The honey will be just fine but it affects the colour of your wax & it’s a less premium product after that. Also if you don’t use the flow hives you can go with the traditional Langstroth hives with plastic or wax foundation. Unfortunately that means that you can’t cut honey in the comb. You can charge $7 for a piece of spring honeycomb so it depends on your customer base if that’s worth trying for yourself. They make honeycomb frames that have no wire supports or foundation & it will fit your hive boxes like any other frame. You can only do this with a very strong colony because they have to start from scratch in that kind of honey super. They need enough honey to be able to create completely fresh comb & it takes 7 pounds of honey to make 1 pound of wax. If you’re feeding your bees in a dirth, there’s nothing better for a bee’s health than honey (You’ll get it back eventually)

What about adding a second brood box to avoid some of the problems you had? Would give queen plenty of space to avoid being nectar bound etc.

Great review of the flow frame, right on the mark of its pros and cons. Well done. I have 4 flow frames and love them but would never recommend having more than 3-4, (2 or 3 would be more realistic), definitely a small backyard beekeeper hive (super). Only comment I have is when you harvested the frame out of the box it seemed the frame was level instead of tilted 5 degrees and the entire frame was opened instead of 1/4, or less, at a time. The bottom receiving tube should never be more than 1/2 full while harvesting. I have harvested partially capped frames with very little loss into the hive but one needs to be patient.

ty, great video!

It would’ve helped to keep the honey from dripping down if #1 is was properly sloped to flow out the tube and #2 if you only drained 1/2 of the frame at a time.

I am interested in bee keeping I came across your video. Any advice from you or your subscribers is appreciated

Them frames was drippin like an ac window unit

I decided awhile ago I'd never get a flow hive. It's a big investment for something that will eventually just deteriorate and break, since it's made of plastic. It might work great the first few years, but tell me how it works 10 years from now when heat and UV like have beaten it down in the sun. There are many shady rip-offs these days on the market, so I'm sure a lot of new beekeepers are getting duped spending hundreds of dollars for junk.

why not just get two brood boxes? Plenty of food and Flow hives are in even northern europe without problem.

As of July 2024 this hive costs about $1,000 which is equivalent to about 250 lbs of honey at supermarket prices. I don’t know if this hive will be able to generate this much honey over its lifetime, but I’m pretty sure no human being will be able to consume that much honey. What’s the point? What am I missing?

Your made four very specific and important observations about the Flow Hive: one, in regions with four seasons, its use is limited to spring and summer; two, no place for fingers to get a good grip when carrying full of honey. And, also about the frames and the Queen bee, too! I think, this is the kind of information that companies want to hear for research and development. Any chance you’ve shared this information (or video) with the people at Flow Hive? If so, how did it go? Would or will we see improved models on their website? (Surely, based on information just like yours.) Most educational, thank you!

Wouldn't just adding another brood box solve the swarming problem? If it's a matter of space to expand you should be able to just stack another box. With regards to the separation of the queen from the superbox, as far as I understand it, the worker bees are always tending to the queen, they should never leave her and they should always bring her the food she needs (from the superbox), so not sure why they'd leave the broodbox, where the queen and brood are, to go the superbox even if it's where the food reserves are stored. I was under the impression the bulk of the hive is always at and around the brood hives specifically to keep it at temperature especially at winter, and that's where the queen would be too. Or am I mistaken?

This is amazing information, there is no other way but to try different methods to find the one you like better. I'm nowhere near getting bees at this point, but excited to learn a lot about them before we actually start. I'm keeping all these bee videos on a playlist to refer back to them There's a lot of small projects to perfect the systems we have with the ducks and goats, to keep them more comfortable and easier to do chores in the morning, before we decide to add a new animal/project =D In my list next is rabbit and chickens ( meat ones) but I first need to process 5 drakes that we have, we are only keeping 9 girls and 1 drake ( one of the ducklings that is very sweet and mellow ) I'm kind of over weird and skittish drakes, they are going to end up being raccoon food becauuse they don't want to go in the shelter at night. So I better put them in the freezer before that happens. Have you processes duck? Is it too old to process a 2 year old one? I want to start doing it at the 51 day mark from now on for better meat quality but at this point is a question of numbers and as an introduction before I get rabbits and meat chickens. Any advice on the duck processing is highly appreciated, I've been watching processing videos non stop! Much love to you and your family friend! Lety

Video yang bagus sangat bermanfaat 👍👍👍

I wish I have ine

Thanks for your video. I’m a new residential bee keeper and Flow hive owner in a dry, warmer Southern California climate. Our winters are probably milder and shorter than where you are now. I was wondering, Why not stack another Langstrom frame on top of the first BEFORE putting the flow super on, to allow your colony and queen to be stronger and warmer in the winter? Would this allow you to use the queen excluder without worrying about the queen or would this make the hive too large? Obviously this would take longer and if your seasons are short this could be difficult. Just wondering if that would work…?

Why don’t you just take the supers off and leave the bee boxes with the queen then you won’t have a queen laying in the super also you could reduce the entrance size of the landing and wrap the bottom boxes with insulation and leave the supers open so they are cold to force the bees to winter in the bottom and face the bees away from the wind to keep it warmer also you could put a flood light facing the bottom box say like your trying to save a well or plant this will also encourage the bees to stay in the bottom without ever having to remove the queen extruder

I want wax and I don't want micro plastics.

I need help on what's going on, I see the set broken down and from the other videos check the wax caps and turn.

What if you have 3 levels and cap the 1st level (flow) in winter so the bees and the Queen stay warm while doing it the flow way during warmer months?

So I just got a flow super for my birthday. I have the queen excluder on. I'm getting ready to order bees. From my understanding, you remove your flow super from the hive and add a regular frame for winter?

Why don't you try a bee house . Bec its good for people with winters .

It sounds like you don't like it that much, can you send it to me? 😁

??? flowhive never communicated this tru the manual or other??? thats unacceptable! they must know about this very common problem. its not common to the extent you experienced but still quite common.

OK so the flow hive doesn't sound like it's good for a beginner at all then. It sounds like an add on for someone who already knows how to bee keep with a lot of ways to screw it up. I noticed another commenter say that this thing would crush the larvae and now I know there shouldn't be larvae in there. I'm starting off with 2x4 squares laid flat and layers of plywood between them. Holes drilled in the sides. If bees move in, great. I'm not going beyond that.

It is mysterious to me why one never sees how to set up the brood box.

what is the material of the hxagonal frame? the bee mae it?

How many acres do you have?

Are they good for starting a farm and buying 10 or 15 of them?

I INVENTED THIS

they're banned in California

Very easy simple concept basic logic if life is not free why the hell would death be any cheaper it's not. So the question one may wonder is the spiritual cost to one's own soul and spirit for having lived and died only using the smallest percentage of A fraction of the true potential they were first born with equally as reckless neglectful at the same time to the lowest standards of quality for so many years now global pollution has diminished the quality of life to the point where today's people are living, dying and yielding the worst spiritual kickback that has ever been manifested since the beginning of life only getting worse. The polar opposite extreme to that is today's people should be living and dying to the highest standards of quality which would make each and every moment physically, mentally, financially and spiritually beneficial rewarding constantly consistently S.R.F.

please stop saying "imporant" that T is IMPORTANT.

Flow hives sicken me. They are for people who want to turn a tap and get honey. Why not just go to the supermarket and buy some honey instead?