In this solo tutorial, Laurence Edwards walks through his three‑generation evolution of a Flow Hive honey‑extraction system, culminating in a compact, sealed Version 3. He explains why earlier setups (direct tap, simple tube) attracted bees and wasps, and how adding a food‑grade silicone hose with a black elbow, hose clips, and sturdy plastic containers eliminated ingress while improving flow. He credits Frederick Dunn’s elbow design and a subscriber’s donated plastic containers, notes the stark difference in bee behavior between his real Flow Hive frames and a fake test rig, and highlights that the real hive outperforms the fake one due to colony dynamics. The video ends with a call for viewer suggestions and feedback.
Chapters
Who would have thought that extracting honey from a Flow Hive would have so many different permutations? We did version 1, which was straight out of the tap, full of lots of bees. That definitely didn't work. We did version 2, which was way, way better. Kept most of the honey in the jar and didn't attract as many bees. But it still had a few flaws. We're back today with a really quick version 3 to show you probably my near final version and my method for extracting honey from a Flow Hive. So I'm definitely getting my bee suit on after what happened in the previous videos. Let's go and extract some honey from my Flow Hive. Right, we're all set up with version 3 of my Flow Hive honey extraction. Lots of comments last time that the video was too long, so today I'm gonna do a super compressed version. Previously, I did it with just a tube, had a cup full of bees, then I added on some flexible food-grade hose. That was good, but it really did need an elbow. I'm copying Fred Dunn here, he put an elbow on his. I've got myself a black silicone food-grade elbow, tapers on both ends. I've opened up the key, the honey's flowing through. One of my channel subscribers came to my house on his holiday and provided me with these plastic containers. How nice is that? Absolutely amazing. And I feel so bad because I've lost his name. You know who you are though. You came to my house, you left these containers. I wasn't there, but thank you so much for it. That's really kind, very much appreciated. Even better than that, they are fantastic. So much better than the glass jars I was using before, and it means that I can get a really good amount into each container like this. Already you can see the bees coming back round, and what's a really interesting observation is I just I just did exactly the same video over there on my fake Flow Hive frames, and the bees did not come round here at all. So it's clearly to do with kind of this location here, or probably just the bees in this Flow Hive that I've requeened now, a little bit angry. Give you a close-up though and show you version 3, probably my final version of my Flow Hive extraction setup. Right, so the setup is as follows. We've got the plastic Flow Hive tube, goes directly into the frame. Then I've got a hose clip, then I've got food-grade silicone pipe that goes into another food-grade silicone black pipe with the elbow built in like that, and then I've got another Flow Hive plastic tube on the end, and then I'm going straight into that container. You can see there, that wasp is interested, it can smell the honey, but it cannot get in. Completely sealed, doesn't matter how many times I change this over, this is gonna work so well. So well. We've got honey coming into there now, really good flow. I really do love watching the wasps try and get in, the honeybees try and get in. They have got no chance with this setup here, really nice and secure. Those hose clips keep it really well clipped into place. Decent flow coming out of there. In fact, the original Flow Hive has way outperformed the fake Flow Hive in terms of the amount of honey that they've collected. Not putting that down to the fact that one's real and one's fake, Just to do with the bees that are inside. So I'll just leave that running for a little bit, tease all the bees, tease all the wasps that are trying to get this honey, see how much we can get out of this frame here. Remember, I cleared out all of these frames about 2 or 3 weeks ago, and the bees in this colony here have filled them back up and capped them right over again. So there we go, nearly full up. It's working really well. The bees can't get in, the changeovers are even better. I think I finally found myself a really good way of extracting honey in my Flow Hive. If you think there's a further improvement, if you think Frederick Dunn does it better, stick it in the comments. Let's see where we get to.
