I Get to See a "Flow Hive

    Saturday was a slow day at the Beez Neez, not uncommon in late October.  The highlight of the day was a visit from a customer who had purchased one of those fancy "Flow Hives" from Australia. He very thoughtfully brought it by the shop so I could have a look at it. He summarized it as terribly expensive and expressed skepticism that it would work long term. However, as he put it, "What good is a hobby if you can't fritter away money on it." Actually he used a different word besides fritter, but fritter conveys his meaning and is more appropriate for my intended audience.  Those of us who have long experience dealing with the insides of bee hives can easily imagine anything mechanical getting gummed up.  His point was that it seemed like a fun thing to try in spite of the fact that it was frightfully expensive.

"Flow Hive" interior

This cap is removed and replaced with a spigot.

It comes with a window on the side

The plastic comb visible through the window

    We spent some time examining the device together. It was fun to see it up close and figure out exactly how it is supposed to work. He let me take a few photos for the Beez Neez blog and Facebook. I offered some helpful suggestions, most of which had apparently been covered in the instructions which came with the flow hive.

   I have at least two other customers that I know of who have also purchased a flow hive.  I'm sure I will have lots of feed back from each of them by the end of this next honey season. I hope we have a good nectar flow this coming summer so they will have have the gratification of having it work well at least once.

   My observation hive in the front of the Beez Neez is still doing well.  I just installed them in early September so they have only been there for about seven weeks.  The queen had been installed in the nuc in mid August so they had a three week head start on becoming a bee hive before I transferred them into the observation hive. She had filled two frames with brood in that time.

Abigail the First resting with her entourage 

   I've named the queen "Abigail the First" after one of my grand daughters. I located the queen yesterday morning (October 24, 2015) as she was resting on some capped honey. A queen bee isn't as busy in October as she in in July.  The brood nest has been reduced so there is a limited demand on her capacity to lay eggs. That is especially true in this little observation hive which is the equivalent of a four frame nucleus hive.  It is like a part time job compared to the egg laying machine the queen needs to be in July. Although, even while resting this queen is fulfilling a very important function for the hive.  Her little entourage is collecting her pheromones for distribution throughout the hive. If  she were not present in the hive to provide queen pheromone it would only take a short time before every last worker bee realized the hive had become queenless.

   I didn't think to mark this queen as I wasn't planning to use this nuc hive in the observation hive at the time. I made it up.  Additionally, it doesn't hurt for people to learn to spot an unmarked queen. Anyone can spot a marked queen. What's the big challenge in that? Note how long her abdomen is compared to the worker bees around her. Also her wings only reach 2/3 the length of her abdomen. The top of her thorax is enlarged and shiny black. The top of a worker bee's thorax appears brownish-black because of all of the little brown hairs on it.  Most of the queens retinue in the photo above are upside down, but the two closest to her head are right side up. The difference in the color of the thorax is pretty obvious.  The fact that the bees tend to cluster in a circle around the queen makes it easier to spot the queen. Even when she is walking across a frame, the other bees tend to get out of her way. It is as if she had a herald proclaiming "Make way for the Queen!"  Experienced beekeepers spot the queen as much by how she behaves and how the other bees behave around her as by how she looks.