Leigh R.
im a beekeeper, and im getting tired of saying why i think this is a very bad idea, if your interested in bee keeping join a local bee keeping club and learn how to look after these very cool critters before you even think about the honey you might get, start at the start, you might just fall in love with the whole process and do the right thing by the bees and get some honey too, its not as easy to look after bees as you might think, and its definetly not cheap
Brandy N.
So all these bee keepers agree and say it is bad but not one of you will answer the several people on this thread that want to know why? I am genuinely interested as well. I've been interested in keeping bees for a while and saw this... If it is not a good option what are the reasons?
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i love bees and honey and civilization saving technology.
Mostly the explanation I've received is that unless you know someone with good hands on experience with the flow hive you will have difficulty getting the channel to stay open the way intended. But I have people here in my gardening circle doing it with success so that's the real key. I took a good introductory course with the provincial bee keeper and his wife who have been keeping bees in their family for three generations. He said there was nothing wrong with the flow hive and he in fact was going to try one that year. There is so much person to person shared knowledge and experience with the keeping of bees.
The reluctance of changing or accepting the flow hive over the Langstrom system probably comes from the hardwork philosophy of most beekeepers I've met. With all the hard work and effort required to be set aside for your hive or hives a system that purports to save time smells suspicious right off the bat to old hats. You will still need to be doing the same amount of work for both systems so you will need that person in your area or persons you can go and trade knowledge with. New colonies are also much less domesticated when first recieved then ones that have been kept for several years. There is a little danger in people watching flow hive you tube videos and then just ordering a colony after they have built their apparatus. The hive videos I've watched don't really go into enough detail about the whole process of keeping a hive healthy from year to year. This post makes me want to save up for a good bee keeping suit so I can start helping out beekeepers in this area. I want that hands on knowledge and eye for finding the Queen etc.
I've tried bee keeping few years. I'm no an expert but in my opinion the flow hive does not solve the real problems. you have to disturb the bees in any case whit the flow hive or or without flow hive. I think a simpler way to harvest honey out of the hive without disturbing bees at least not very violently way is use spacer between colony box and honey box. bees can go out of honey box but can no longer get back in the honey box. wait a couple of days ans honey box is free of bees. then you can harvest honey without crushing bees. at least much cheaper way to do this and I find it easier as well.
( I do not know what is the name of this device in English please help me) http://www.mesi.fi/tuotteet/mehilaispako-nicot/ or