“Why aren’t my bees filling the Flow frames ?” is one of the most frequently asked questions on Flow hive-related beekeeping Facebook sites and forums.
The ability of bees to produce excess honey comes down to a couple of simple factors:
Orara Valley Honey has searched the internet for the best tips on ensuring that your Flow hive is productive and healthy.
First, let’s examine how and why bees make and store excess honey.
The Food Standards Code describes honey as “the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of blossoms or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant-sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which honey bees collect, transform and combine with specific substances of their own, store and leave in the honeycomb to ripen and mature.”
Honey contains water, fructose, glucose, sucrose, carbohydrates, minerals and proteins (enzymes).
Bees gather nectar from flowers and fill a modified stomach called a nectar sac. When the bee has visited enough flowers to fill the nectar sac, it returns to the hive and passes the nectar onto other bees that also ingest it. This process is repeated many times, and the nectar is mixed with enzymes until the moisture content is reduced from 70% to about 20%.
One of the enzymes (invertase) converts sucrose in the nectar to glucose and fructose. The bees also deposit the dehydrated nectar solution onto the inside of wax cells, where it is further reduced to about 17% moisture. Once the cell is filled with “ripe” honey and capped with wax.
Ripe honey is shelf-stable and can remain edible for many years without any other means of preservation.
Ripe and capped honey in a Flow frame
The European honeybee (Apis mellifera) has adapted to survive long periods when nectar is not available, such as a northern hemisphere winter, a prolonged drought, or an extended wet season. The bees eat the excess stored honey and also feed it to developing brood. The honeybee colony also uses honey to obtain energy to heat the hive when the temperature is cold. Bees can survive sub-freezing temperatures for many months provided they have energy stored as honey.
As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, bees need two basic requirements to produce excess honey and subsequently fill the Flow frames.
Whether you start with a nucleus hive, a swarm, or a package, it is essential to allow the bees to build up to a level where they want to expand into the Flow super.
Brood should be present in all stages (eggs, larvae & capped brood). You must have a young, vigorous, laying queen.
Your hive must be disease-free. Bees won’t expand if they are battling Chalkbrood, European foulbrood, or American foulbrood.
A good, strong, single eight-frame hive will have at least the equivalent of four full frames of brood in all stages. Typically, in an eight-frame Flow hive, the brood will be spread over six frames, with a frame of pollen and a frame of honey to make up the eight.
The frames should be covered with bees to the point that it is difficult to see the surface of the brood combs. When you let the bees settle, they will be plentiful on the top of the frames.
When added to a brood box that meets these requirements, the bees readily move through a queen excluder into the flow frames.
Adding your Flow super when the brood box is 80% drawn is acceptable. However, the results will not be as good as when the bees are busting out of the brood box.
A strong hive with plenty of bees is essential
The other essential requirement for getting bees to fill your Flow frames is an excellent, steady nectar flow. Bees forage over a huge area. On average, they can fly about 3 km away from the hive to source nectar and pollen.
If there is not enough surplus nectar for bees to store and convert into honey, they won’t have the resources to move into the Flow frames, coat them with wax, or fill the cells with honey.
Establishing flowering plants in your garden can attract bees to your backyard; however, it cannot stimulate a honey flow.
Beekeepers need to notice the seasons and the types of plants flowering in the area. Join a beekeeping club and speak to other local beekeepers about the honey flora in your locality. In some parts of the world, honey flows are predictable and regular; however, many Australian native trees can be sporadic and unpredictable when it comes to producing nectar. Local knowledge is crucial; your experience will grow after a few seasons.
So, in summary, if there is no honey in the hive, you probably don’t have the essential combination of a strong hive and a flow of surplus nectar.
Willow Bottlebrush (Melaleuca salicina) flowering heavily.
Flow frames can be added whenever you have the most optimal conditions, e.g.
The best time to add a Flow super and frames is in spring when the bees are expanding, and you can take advantage of increased bee numbers, warming weather and spring nectar flows. You can also add more Flow supers during the summer if your bees are going well.
New beekeepers frequently ask, “How long does it take for bees to fill a frame?” A healthy hive on a good nectar flow can quickly fill a six-frame Flow super in a couple of weeks. It depends entirely on the conditions. If nectar availability dries up, the bees will remove honey from the frames to survive. Typically, though, it would be reasonable to expect a super to fill in a month or two under average conditions.
Flow frames full of honey and ready-to-harvest
It takes a lot of effort for your bees to get the flow frames (or any other frames) ready to fill with honey. They use energy from nectar that they collect to make wax in glands on their bodies. This wax is used to line the plastic cells and also to seal the gaps in the Flow hive mechanism. As described above, hive strength and a nectar flow are essential; however, here are a few extra tips for getting bees to move up into the Flow super.
Where conditions are poor, some supplementary feeding may be helpful. Brood rearing and, therefore, hive strength can be stimulated by feeding 1:1 sugar syrup. The NSW Department of Primary Industries has an excellent fact sheet about feeding sugar syrup. Never feed honey to bees if you are trying to stimulate them to grow. Honey from unknown sources can spread disease. You should cease feeding sugar syrup before you add your Flow frames. Pollen supplements can also help to stimulate brood rearing in spring.
Bees can sometimes be reluctant to move through queen excluders for no apparent reason. A queen excluder is a wire or plastic screen that allows the workers to pass through but not the queen (or drones). The use of a queen excluder is very much a personal choice; however, queens have been known to lay drone brood in the flow frames.
You can also try removing the queen excluder for a week or two so the bees can move up into the Flow super unhindered. Once the bees are working the Flow frames, you can replace the queen excluder. When you return it, ensure the queen is back under the queen excluder in the brood box.
Do you want to read more about queen excluders? Please take a look at our blog Queen Excluder Pros & Cons.
Plastic foundation in beehives is nothing new. Beekeepers have used it for decades. To increase bees’ acceptance of it, it is generally standard practice to coat it with melted beeswax.
Some beekeepers report that introducing beeswax onto the Flow frames may encourage the bees to work them. This can be done by gently rubbing pure beeswax over the surface of the frames. Alternatively, you can melt some wax and brush it on the frames while it is still liquid, being careful not to put too much on. Mixing a 1:1 sugar syrup solution and spraying it into the frames can also help draw bees into the honey super.
I have never experienced problems with bees accepting and working the Flow frames without waxing them. Waxing frames and spraying sugar syrup keeps beekeepers busy; however, it is no substitute for a strong hive and a good nectar flow.
When you install your Flow frames into the honey super, make sure that you put the metal key into the top slot and insert it fully. Turn it 90 degrees so that the key handle hangs down vertically in line with the frame. This will set the frame in the correct position for the bees to start filling it.
Here’s a great video from Flow Hive that describes the process:
If everything else fails, ask for help. Beekeeping can be a complicated hobby when you are starting. Mt. Coramba Apiculture recommends that you contact a beekeeping club in your area if you are having trouble. Mt. Coramba Apiculture offers beekeeping courses and workshops for beginners in Northern New South Wales, and we also specialise in Flow hive mentoring.
The Flow website has some great resources. Please take a look at their frequently asked questions page. The Flow forum is also a great place to lurk or ask questions.
Bees won’t fill a misaligned Flow frame
The owner of Mt. Coramba Apiculture, Glenn Locke, has had the beekeeping urge since the early 1980s as a 14-year-old teenager.
The Warwick (QLD) high school agriculture department had a few beehives, and beekeeping was taught as a subject. Glenn’s agriculture teacher, Jim Caird, let him have a nucleus hive, and the addiction started.
The move to the mid-north coast of NSW, particularly the beautiful Orara Valley, means that Glenn now has the space to commence beekeeping again. Glenn has managed beehives in the Orara Valley since 2009.
We supply high-quality local, raw honey.
Do you have questions about Flow hive frames?
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That was very helpful, I will try melting some wax and hopefully get the bees started on the flow frame. I believe most of my frames are still miss aligned and i have tried to align them and it still looks not together so i was thinking of ordering one or 2 more frames to help with the alignment.
I hope you are safe up there at Nana Glen with the fires and did not lose too many bees. My Daughter lives up that way and the fires came very close to her.
Thanks Carmel. Provided you follow the video in the article your frames will be aligned. I have never melted wax on the frames. It makes no difference despite the anecdotal stories on social media. You need a strong hive & a nectar flow. We are getting rain at Nana Glen so hopefully, the bush will be green again soon. Best wishes, Glenn Locke
Thank you for the very helpful article. Given the typical weather at this time of year (early spring) in South East Queensland, do you think that there is any harm in putting a flow super on a new hive (nuc just installed in brood box) even though the bees are unlikely to use it for quite some time? I would just like to have it installed on top to show friends the new hive etc.
Hello Adrian, Best practice is to delay putting the flow super onto the brood box until all frames are drawn & the bees are covering every frame. Placing the Flow super on now is allowing them way too much space. I’m happy to talk the issue over with you if you give me a call on 0459066297.
Thank you very much for your reply and offer to discuss further by phone – that is very kind of you. I will be patent and wait until the frames are all drawn out and busy as you suggest.
Hi there,
I have a flow hive super. I have a brood box and a traditional super that is full and busy. The angophora is flowering now (west of Willow Tree NSW). Can I put the flowhive super on top of the ordinary super, or should I take the ordinary super away to harvest and just have brood box and flowhive super? Regards Nicky
Hello Nicky, put the flow super on between the queen excluder & the honey super. You can take the flow super off when it gets cold & overwinter them with the brood box & honey super. Best wishes, Glenn Locke
Just want to ask ,can put a new flowhive super between my my old flowhive super and broodbox.I have lots of flower and I going to harvest hiney from my flowhive super.
Yes you can.
I’ve had my two Flowhives for about 5 months and I put the supers on after about 3mths. That was at the beginning of summer and there was a lot of nectar around, but the brood box frames were only about 65 – 75% filled. Maybe less. I can see there are quite a few bees in the super now, but no sign of honey or wax in there. Hopefully my bees are just a bit slow, but I wonder if there is anything I should look out for that might be slowing them down?
Hello Joey, There are so many variables. It always comes back to hive strength & nectar flow so without looking at your bees I can’t offer much more help than what is in the blog you have read. Good luck.
My bees won’t pass through my queen excluder. Looks it’s to small for them or I did something wrong:(
Yes, they will. Your hive isn’t strong enough.
Hi There – I am wondering is a small amount of attractant sprayed on the flow frames, such as Swarm Commander, may help get the bees to move up into the Flow Frames?
Cheers
Hive strength & nectar flow are the only two factors that matter.