I will need to buy a hive in the next couple months, for my hunting land. You would still go with a traditional hive? (Assuming costs were comparable) as there is little saved in gear (besides the centrifuge.)
Yeah, you can get honey easy enough without an extractor. You can look for a used hive, ideally one with bees in the spring. If you don't find anything then you'll need to order a hive and buy bees. Multiple suppliers but I like Dadants out of Illinois, stuff is excellent quality and a bit cheaper than Kelley's, Roots, etc. You'll need bees and queen and you have two choices: package bees with queen or a nuc. Nucs cost more but odds of successly establishing a hive are at least double so worth an extra 30-40 bucks. AT
There is a local bee keeper that sells a lot of honey, here. He sells (1) hive with 3lbs of bees, for @$100. Is that a reasonable price? He claims to hundreds of active hives.
I'd get a couple questions answered: 1. What exactly is included? So, you want to find out is that a 5 frame nucleus hive, a full 10 frame Langstroth hive, hive body, telescoping top cover, bottom board, hive stand, and supers, etc. what? 2. How long have the bees been established in that hive and is the queen actively laying eggs? A person can pull 3 pounds of bees from a colony, stick them and a queen reared in a different colony into a hive body, slap a lid on the top and bingo you have a hive with bees. This is basically what you get/do with package bees. The bees have to accept the queen, she has to accept them, they all have to accept the hive (container) and then the queen needs to start laying in comb the worker bees have to first draw out. A lot of "ifs" where a nucleus or established hive have already gone through all that and the bees and queen are all happy in their home and she is laying eggs and the workers are tending the larve and rearing bees. A hundred bucks for a solid nuc or established hive is a good price. Going price in Midwest for just a package of 3 pounds plus a queen stuck in a cage inside that package is on the order of 85-100 bucks. AT
@kellory , I have/had many of the same questions you seem to. This link helped me out quite a bit. The AO is different, but most of the info I'm thinking should be the same. Hope it helps ya. http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-0135/ANR-0135.pdf
Im actually kinda impressed with this. The bees dont have to build the honeycomb 1st so more production time is spent making honey. THey have rasied over $8m in 8 weeks. with only 10 days to go. *raises eyebrows* Harvesting honey is messy this is pretty clean, easy and well thought out. I would still leave some traditional honey comb building in the bee box because the wax has lots of great uses. Its not always just about the honey, honey
Agree @Ganado. I got on their list for updates before it's release. There are many here with much more experience in beekeeping than I have(none) and several of those have voiced doubts. But like you, I am impressed and intrigued with the flow hive and plan on buying a complete set up when I purchase two "standard" hive setups. I've got a TON of stuff to get done this summer, so I doubt if it will be set up this year, but I want everything on hand-except bees and ready to try by this fall.
SO, Just what happens to all the brood. they are capped of course and if the cells are not the right size the bees will chew them up or just cap over them and waste space. Bees place, eggs, honey and pollen all in the same frames. Can it work? Sure. But honey does not flow out in a short time so you will need to protect those jars from varmints.
No typically you have at least 2 frames per hive, in the top frame is the queen and her eggs and baby bees (j/k) and under that frame is an "excluder" which keeps the larger sized queen and drones (that are worthless bees that just sit around all day and drink mead) and the lower frames are harvested for honey.
Basically no bees like plastic and if one is using plastic foundation, it MUST be coated in wax first if one hopes to get any semblance of organized comb being built upon it. Ganado, with conventional harvesting/extraction methods, the bees will need to build no less comb with this gizmo than in my regular supers. I just pull the super, cut the caps off the cells with a hot knife, drain or extract the honey, then they go right back on a hive to be refilled. HK, Ref the brood; I think they are targeting this new device to only be used in the supers. If there is a queen excluder installed between the hive bodies and supers, there generally will be no brood and not much pollen either. But having harvested honey a fair amount, it just is not that hard nor messy and I just don't see much point to all this other than to make money for the inventors. And yeah, the video is marketing hype. The bees would be all over those drain jars and it would promote robbing and cut into overall production. And it would take a good day for the bulk of the honey to drain from a frame; not this open a valve, fill a jar, walk away impression they are fostering to raise money. AT
That is true @hk you can just cap the comb and extract if you have a centrifuge or lots of time =) but at some point the wax gets old and has to be harvested. Or at least it did we I was a kid. Maybe that has changed And you are right bee's aren't stupid they would be all over the honey the way they set it up. Would still have to pull out the base to extract honey. Might be perfect for the African been invasion =)
I never used excluders because I found they are limiters to the bees movement and can cause SWARMING. I always had a mix of either past brood cells or a mix of Pollen and Honey.
I posted this link early on. But I guess no one fully read it. This hive can be used with or without queen excluders. "The flow frame cells are wider and deeper than normal comb cells so the queen will not lay worker eggs in them. Occasionally we have found that a queen will lay a few drone (male bee) eggs in a flow frame. This doesn't stop the flow frame from working, but does kill any drone eggs or larvae in the cells when an extraction takes place. Given that this is relatively rare occurrence, it is up to you if you want to use a queen excluder or just strain the jar of honey if you see drone eggs or larvae in your honey. If you are at all concerned we recommend you use a queen excluder." They ARE used ONLY in the supers. And the will fit a standard hive. And yes, you can mix and match them with standard frames within the same supers. They DO RECOMMEND caps for the jars. And the video is very CLEARLY time lapse in showing the honey draining all day. And at NO TIME do they ever show the flow to be faster than a trickle. I do not see any clear falsehoods here. Frequently Asked Questions - Flow™ Hive FAQs
The false hood is the fact that the implied flow does not need any protection from Rain, Bugs, Robber Bees, Bumble Bees, Ants, Uncles or Racoons, just to mention a few problems.
I can see raccoons being a problem, but not the bees themselves. I went through the literature on this a while back when it first posted. The caps are to be fitted tightly to the hose with no gaps. There is no exposed honey to steal. Ants would be a problem if the hose were not tightly inserted, but I know I could very easily cut the hose at an angle, and a tight hole, would lockcout all bugs, and rain issues. It all depends upon how tightly you have fit the pieces. I see no problems there either.
