Above: Laura’s two “Flow Hives”
March 19, 2018
While at Glen Davis, Laura showed us her Flow HIves”, the modern, easy way to keep bees without all the dressing up and smoking etc. of the “old style” beekeeper. These are an Australian invention and their full story can be found on their main website here.
The bees enter at the bottom front (seen at top) and the lower compartments are the breeding and growing sections. Honey is harvested from the top section and from the rear without any disturbance to the bees. Honey is deposited and collected in a row of modules which are slightly parted using a turning tool to allow the honey to flow out of the bottom of each compartment in turn straight into a jar or other container.
The honey collected is pure raw honey with no contaminants and needs no further processing before being packaged for sale or use. It took us much less than an hour to collect about 2-3kg from only two of the modules. All this time the bees are going about their normal day totally undisturbed. Inspection panels in the side allow a view of what is happening, one of Laura’s hives is new and so there is no honey collected yet in that one as the bees are still populating the whole hive.
The hives are kept under a shadecloth “hoop” to maintain a reasonably stable climate.
