Fake Flow Hives vs Real Flow Hives. Full Comparison and What You Need To Know

In this video, I'm going to compare my first full season using the original genuine Flow Hive versus the fake copies that I got from Amazon. So there's been no endorsements in play here. I paid for both of these hives using my own money, buying them directly from UK suppliers. Now, first off, why did I want to buy myself a Flow Hive? The Flow Hive in the UK has got such a terrible reputation, and I speak to people about this and they say, oh, Flow Hives are rubbish, never get a Flow Hive, they're absolutely useless. and I say to them, well, have you used a Flow Hive? And they say, no, I know that they're rubbish though. Absolutely adamant that something's rubbish before they've even tried using it. And you know me, I don't like to just kind of take somebody else's experience and then pass it off as my own. And I find that there's a huge amount of that that goes on, especially in the UK, but especially with regard to the Flow Hive. So I kind of wanted to have a go to see if it worked, what's good about it, what's bad about it. And then that's evolved into like the different types of Flow Hive because I bought this secondhand Flow Hive and it cost me about £300 secondhand, and then I bought like the fake Flow Hive that I've got and I paid like £160 for it brand new. And then kind of comparing the new version of the Flow Hive for the fake ones, you can buy maybe 4 or 5 fake versions for 1 original version. So if this was a case that the original one was say £200 and the fake one was say like £180, £170, There'd be no kind of doubt in my mind. I just always get the real one because you want to support the manufacturer. But the cost difference is just so vast that I thought I'm gonna have to have a go, have a go on the fake one, see what it's like. So this is the first full season where I have run the original Flow Hive, the genuine version that I've got next to me here, and I've run the fake one as well. I've built my bees up in both of them. I've got decent amount of honey out of both of them. But in this video, I'm just going to give you that comparison in terms of what I like, what I don't like about both of them, and then at the end, I'll pick which one I think you should go and buy. So let's start at the very top, and I genuinely do mean the top. Both of these hives have by far and away the worst designed roof I have ever experienced in my life. I do not want to offend 3-year-olds, but it is like a 3-year-old has designed it. It doesn't look good, it's not durable, it's not practical, it is completely and utterly useless. Seriously, who designed that roof? Shocking design. Needs to go in the bin. Please, can we just have like a flat metal version? Flat so you can rest things on it, metal so it will just kind of be durable in all weathers. I do not understand any reasons why they built the roof and made the roof so, so bad. I promise the rest of the video I don't rant as much as that, but I do honestly hate that roof. Who designed that? Right, the next difference— and this isn't a difference between like the fake versus the genuine, but the difference between the 2 versions that I've got My genuine Flow Hive is supposedly an 8-frame box, and my fake one is a 10-frame box. Now the fake one is 10 frames, is loads better in the brood area, so definitely go for the biggest brood box that you can get. But weirdly, the fake one is manufactured so much better, out of better wood, thicker wood, much more square. The thicknesses are correct, the spacing in the middle is correct. Like the 8-frame one has just got like half a frame in there, and the bees build wild comb up against the wall. If it's 8-frame, make it an 8-frame. If it's 10-frame, make it a 10-frame. I don't want an 8.5-frame brood box. It causes lots and lots of issues. Now, in terms of the floors, there's a clear winner for me here as well. It's the fake floor. And the fake floor is so simple. It is just a solid floor, completely solid, little bit of a slope to it. No trays, nothing that can go wrong, nothing that goes in, nothing that comes out. Really nice, simple design. Whereas the Flow Hive one, just to me, seems overly complicated with little spindly legs. And I know you can adjust the levels and you'll get some benefits of kind of keeping your Flow Hives level. But I just level the pallets that they're on and then whatever I put on them is completely level. So I don't really have any benefit to all these gizmos in the floor. And for me, I don't like any kind of monitoring in the floor of these. I don't use it. I treat religiously anyway once the supers come off. So I've not got any use for any of the gizmos on the floor. And I don't like on the original version that it's so high up. Makes the center of gravity much higher, means it's much more likely to fall over. So you might be thinking like, I'm struggling to find anything that I actually like with the genuine one, and you'd be right. There isn't really any design feature that I have on my version of the genuine Flow Hive that is better than the fake version. And before I filmed this video, I always thought, well, if the fake Flow supers don't work, then it doesn't matter how cheap they are because I know that the real genuine Flow supers do work and they work really well. And the materials, like the correct grade of plastic Stick and you turn the key and you get the honey coming out. Okay, I'll put aside all of the marketing stuff that you see in the videos. Like, I'm not a fan of Flow's marketing where it says you could just turn the key and, you know, no bees are going to come and harass you, because you can see from this video here, bees do harass people in apiaries, don't they? Especially when there's robbing situations, especially at the end of the year. But what Flow have developed is an excellent product, and I say this to everybody that I meet. Yeah, the Flow Hive. Is by far and away the most fun that you can have with beekeeping in your garden. If you're just going to have 1 or 2 beehives and you want some honey from your beehive, you don't have to mess around with extraction equipment, you've got no plans to get any more than that, you just want a couple of hives, then don't even think about any of the other ones. Go with a Flow Hive. They're excellent, really well built, they do exactly what they say on the tin, which is you turn a tap and you get honey coming out. There's a little bit of management involved in there and it's a little bit more tricky than conventional beehive management, But you get to grips with it over a few seasons. But the big thing is they do work. However, this is the first year that I've used my fake Flow Hive, and I really wanted to do a video kind of showing you the differences. And the reason that I couldn't film the video at that point is that it was like monsoon season in North Wales, and all of my bees were starting to starve, and I just had to get the honey off them both really, really quickly. But it was torrential rain, so I just couldn't film it. I tried to do as best as I could with my phone on the days that I could get out, So I'll kind of like intermix some of that into this video here. But I extracted the honey from both a genuine Flow Hive and the fake Flow Hive, and the fake one worked just as well as the original one. Like, you couldn't tell the two apart. I think most people would struggle to tell the two apart if you put them in front of them and obviously didn't look at where they're branded. They look identical, they look exactly the same, and they work exactly the same. So if you're thinking which one am I going to buy? Does the fake one work? Then all I can say to you is the version of the fake Flow Hive that I got works. No doubt about it, it works. And I think the design of it is better than the original one. Now that advice comes with a huge caveat, which is there's probably like 100 different manufacturers of the fake Flow Hive and they're all doing things slightly differently. So somebody might get a really rubbish version. So I kind of hold my hands up and say, sorry, if you get a rubbish version, then that's not on me. Should have probably bought the genuine one, but the version that I've got, which I'm happy to send links out to people from Amazon UK, does work, and it works just as well, if not better, than the original Flow Hive once you take into account the kind of additional features that you get from like the brood box and the floor. The one reservation that I do have with it, and it is frustrating, is like knowing the quality of the plastic that the honey is stored in. I know Flow have got a very good reputation, They give you all the certification for the plastic that's in their flow supers. BPA-free, food safe. You know there's going to be no issues whatsoever. I don't have any of that with the fake one, and I don't really have confidence that the fake one is not tainting the honey. And without that confidence, I can't really recommend it to people because I just don't know what's gone into that plastic. That's the reason really where, like, if you say to me which one should you buy, I kind of still going to stick with the original one and say people should buy the original one and support the manufacturer. I know, maybe a little bit of irony with what's going on in this video, but that's the only one that's going to come with that confidence and that certification to say that the plastic that's being used in those Flow frames is genuine and is safe. I can't say that about the fake Flow Hive, which means I can't recommend the fake Flow Hive, irregardless of the fact that I think it's a better design and works loads better than the original Flow Hive. So please don't give me loads of abuse in the comments. Every time I do videos about Flow Hives and fake Flow Hives, I get loads of abuse from everyone. All I've done here is just compared 2 products that I bought from Amazon, and I bought secondhand from someone in the UK. I'm just telling you, giving you my honest opinion on what works, what doesn't work, what's certified, what's not certified, and my caveated recommendation at the end.