How To Encourage Bees Into Flow Hive Supers – Proven Methods That Actually Work

So one of the questions that I get asked all the time in beekeeping is, how do you get your bees to move up into the super? Now that doesn't matter whether you're talking about a flow super or a normal super, the same kind of tricks apply. And the first thing I say to people is, how many frames of bees are they covering in the brood box? Because if you've got 10 frames and they're only just covering, say, 8 or 9 frames in the brood box, then you've got absolutely no chance of getting them to go up into the super. They need to get to the point in that brood box where they've built it out, They've completely run out of space, and then and only then will they start to move upwards into that super. So if you're looking at your bees, you're thinking, well, come on, what are you doing? Get up into the super, you're taking too long. They do need time to build out that brood box and fill that before they even think about going into the super. If you're starting your colony off really small, I'm gonna show you a trick today to really help boost both the production of bees down in the brood nest, to release the space available in the brood nest, and give you a real push to get the bees working up into the super. So I'll get my bee suit on and I'll show you how to get your bees upstairs working in your Flow Hive supers. So first thing to say is I have 2 Flow Hives. I have a genuine Flow Hive and I have a fake Chinese imitation Flow Hive, which is the one I've got here. It's the perfect opportunity for me today to show you inside this colony and show you how to get the best out of your bees and really help the bees move from the brood nest down below up through the queen excluder into the Flow supers. Now I know there's a debate to be had here. Should we be supporting these? I wanna do a review of these and I'm doing it through the season. At the moment, the genuine Flow Hive is miles in the lead in terms of quality, but the same methods apply in order to get your bees working up in either the genuine Flow supers or the fake Flow supers. So this colony, early on in the year, I shook swarmed it into here. It's been busy building out in that Langstroth 10-frame box, and it's got to a point where we are pretty much full down there now, maybe only covering 8 or 9 frames out of the 10, and there is still 1 frame of foundation. So they're at the point where They're not completely covering that brood nest yet. Still got a little bit more work to do downstairs. This is a really, really good point to get in there, to do this intervention, and to try and tempt the bees upstairs. I'm gonna do that in 2 very specific methods that are kind of conjoined and you do at exactly the same time. Let's get inside, it makes so much more sense when I show you it in practice. So first thing I'm gonna do is just curse about the real Flow Hive and the fake Flow Hive and just say, why have they got gabled roofs? Nightmare. I hate them. Just a nice flat simple roof that I can stack my equipment on would be so much better, and I think they'd look just as good. So really, really not a fan of gabled roofs. I'm also not a fan with the cheap fake Flow Hive kit of these useless bamboo queen excluders. Oh my goodness, they are so rubbish. The bees brace comb in them. The spacing's clearly not right. I'm hoping the queen's not going to get through. But I've got to go out and order some because they sent rubbish Bamboo Queen excluders. So this is what the colony is looking like. We've got them covering pretty much all of the frames. I came in here the other day and I checkerboarded it a bit, so there's 2 frames of foundation in there that the bees are probably working on now. But if you're seeing roughly what you're seeing here, you could say that the brood box is there or thereabouts. It's kind of about full. This is the time to get in there and to do this intervention. I'll pull out a couple of frames and I'll show you exactly what I mean. So I've got a really nice, gentle, calm colony in here, one of our F1 Buckfast queens, and they have grown into a lovely, docile, prolific colony. Really healthy, good-looking brood end to end. I'm really enjoying working on the Langstroth as well. Such a pleasure, and compared to our normal Nationals, you get a lot more bang for your buck per frame. But this frame here, I can't really do a huge amount with. What I'm looking for here is I want to find a frame that's got either a huge amount of honey on it or a vast proportion of honey on it. This one here is like 99% brood, so I want to go back in and I want to find myself a really good frame that's got that good proportion of honey stores on it. So this is the kind of frame that you're looking for here. Get the frame with the most amount of honey, preferably capped honey, but anything will do. And what we're going to do is twofold. We're going to take this frame and we're going to take some of the honey and we're going to move it up into the Flow supers. We're going to get some honey, we're going to get some wax, and we're going to smear it all over the face of the Flow supers. This means the bees will go up there, they're going to try and clean everything up, and it'll give those plastic frames the scent of the hive, the scent of wax, the scent of honey, everything you want the bees to kind of accept that frame as part of their home. Really important step, this, and a step that Dean gave me as some good advice and something that he does as best practice. I've tried it on my other hive over there and it works really, really well. Now, it's not to say that the bees won't go up there if you don't do this, but as I said, this method here is twofold. I have got a brood box here that is pretty much, let's say for argument's sake, full. It's not full of just brood though, and I want my brood box to be full of brood. I don't want it to be full of honey. If they're putting honey in the brood box, they've not got enough space to lay the brood. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna trim off some of this honey, put it into the super, but we're also gonna go through all of the brood box and we're gonna bruise any capped stores that are in the brood box. And we are gonna place those capped stores in between the brood, and we're gonna try and encourage the bees to move them upwards. That's what bees do. They get nectar, they get honey, and they move things upwards, and they keep the brood lower to the ground. I'll give you a close-up of this frame now, show you exactly what I mean. So this is what we're talking about. If you've got a frame in there that is 100% capped stores, even better. That's the one to go for. This one here, we're talking maybe 30 or 40% capped stores, and then we've got lots of open stores down there in the middle. What we're gonna do is we're gonna take the hive tool, We're going to bruise those capped stores, we're going to take some of it off, put it onto the Flow Super frames, and then we're going to replace that frame into the middle of the colony, right in the middle of the brood nest. The bees will hate that, they'll move it up, and the only place that they've got to go is up in that Flow Super where you've already smeared lots of honey, lots of wax, and it should feel like home for the bees. So in terms of bruising the stores, all you want to do, try and encourage the bees to go away. You can do that with a bit of smoke. You just want to get your hive tool on, and you can see that I'm just taking the cappings off a little bit. Don't need to do it any more than that. A bit of smoke will help if you need to get the bees away, but you just want to bruise it a little bit. You can see there, just so you're getting access down to those stores. Shake the frame off, do that across the whole frame, and then we're going to take this frame and put it in the middle of the colony. So before we do that, we're going to take one of our plastic flow frames We're going to place it down there and I'm going to get some of the honey from this frame here, some of the open stores, and I'm just going to drizzle it on the face of this frame. It'll be quite difficult for me to show you this on camera, so I'll show you what it looks like afterwards. But all I'm doing— don't do this with anybody else's honey, don't do it with bought honey. You can only do it with the honey that's from the same hive that you've got. Real risk of kind of cross-contamination, disease control. And it serves those 2 purposes. Like I said, you're freeing up space in the brood nest, and it means that they're going to move that honey upwards. So all I'm doing, I'm just going to mush some of that honey down. Hopefully you can see that going down into the super frames. You can take your time doing this, try not to get honey everywhere, and then you get a little bit of wax and you can scrape that in as well. Now, the frame that you've got left over, you're more than likely going to have taken that from the edge of the colony. That's where they're likely to have put their honey. What you want to do is make some space right in the middle, in between 2 frames of brood, the 2 strongest frames of brood, brood in all stages, or emerging brood that you've got. And then you want to get this dripping frame and put that back down into the colony there. So the brood nest manipulation is now complete, and you can do that across every single frame that's got honey stores in there. And you can't really do too much of it because honey stores, you don't want them downstairs in the brood nest, you want them upstairs in the super. So go through all of your frames, try not to disrupt the bees, but go through, bruise all of those stores, take a little bit off, put them onto the super frames, and then your super frame should look something like this. So there's our super frame, little bit of wax there. I'm going to mush that in, and then hopefully you can see we've got honey all over the face of it, really enticing to the bees, and they're definitely going to go up there and they're going to clean everything up. So you can see there, I've just mushed all of that wax in. Don't worry, the bees will clean everything up. I'm going to make sure that the super is set to actually filling the honey. At the moment it's the wrong way around, so make sure you've got your key with you, turn that key round, and it really is as simple as that. So I'm going to put everything back together again, and I'll tell you why this is a really powerful So I get my queen excluder back on, my fabulous bamboo queen excluder. My honey super's back on as well. I'm gonna get myself a nice crown board to go on top of here, not this ventilated cheap Chinese rubbish. And then I'm gonna build myself a flat roof as well, 'cause I never even know what way the roof goes round. And there we go, that's the manipulation complete. How to get your bees up working in your Flow Hive supers. Go and find the frames in the brood box where the bees have stopped Stored the honey, bruise those frames, take some of the honey and the wax cappings, smear it into the face of the Flow Hive supers, take the frames that you've mushed up all the cappings, put them in the very center of the brood nest. What the bees will do, they hate that, they're gonna go in, clean everything up, take out all of the honey and the gunk that you've mushed into that middle frame downstairs in the brood box, and they're gonna lift it up. Oh, that's right. Upwards. All of this is irrelevant if your bees aren't strong, and you need to get to the point where the bees are filling the brood nest first in order for them to actually move up into the honey super. I've done this on my original Flow Hive, as in the genuine Flow Hive that I've got. That's the video that I'm going to film next, so if you enjoy watching my Flow Hive videos, please hit the subscribe button now.