In this video Laurence Edwards gives a first‑person walkthrough of his heavily populated Flow Hive, which is set up as a double‑brood system. He inspects the top and bottom brood boxes, noting abundant bees, strong brood, plentiful pollen, and a newly mated UK‑F1 Buckfast queen. To prevent swarming he explains that his only swarm‑control tool is making splits, and he describes a recent split he performed. He then moves to the Flow supers, checking for signs of honey readiness: weight, bee activity, and the percentage of cells capped (about 50‑60%). He discusses how the double‑brood configuration provides a buffer that lets the colony store excess pollen and honey, making a single‑hit extraction easier and allowing the brood box stores to be quickly refilled after extraction. Throughout, he shares his enthusiasm for the Flow Hive’s extraction experience, describing it as fun, challenging, and rewarding, and invites viewers to subscribe for more Flow Hive content.
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My Flow Hive is absolutely jam-packed full of bees. Double brood configuration, tons of activity at the entrance. Can't even lift it like that, it is so, so full. In this video, we're going to take a look top to bottom, see if the bees are doing well, and see if we're anywhere near honey extraction time. So you can see lots of nice activity on the entrance, little bit of bearding I would say there as well, in terms of there's not enough Space for the bees inside. Lots of bees coming back in though, always nice to see. Let's take a look inside, see how the bees are getting on. Right, so we take a look inside the top brood box first, then we'll go to the bottom brood box. As you can see, lots and lots of bees, not quite filling that brood box, but this is what I want. This has bought me a little bit of time by running this on a double brood. I reckon if I'd gone single brood, these would be long, long gone by now. Not enough space and they would have swarmed. Really nice, good healthy bees here though, very strong. These are one of our UK-mated F1 Buckfast queens, and as you can see, really, really nice temperament. So good frame of brood, tons of pollen in there as well. This year has just been crazy for nectar, but also for pollen. Bees have been able to go out and collect it freely day in, day out, and this is one of the reasons that I like to keep it as a double brood. give them the space for any excess pollen. Definitely worth a close-up of that frame. Look at all of that pollen. Really, really good-looking frame. So next frame here, we've got another frame of pollen. And there we go, found the queen. Newly mated UK F1 Buckfast queen. Isn't she a beauty? Look at the colour of her. Really beautiful, good-looking queen. She's definitely mated well. Mated in 2023, this one. I had to take a small split out of this Flow Hive because it was just getting too big and I couldn't keep up with it and the honey wasn't ready yet. So I've requeened this once already this year. Your options are definitely limited when it comes to a Flow Hive in terms of what you're going to do. The only way that I've managed the swarm control is just to make splits. And there we go, the queen is off on her way. So good amount of bees both in the top and the bottom box. We've got eggs, we've got worker brood. We've got lots of pollen, lots of honey downstairs as well. But more importantly than that, plenty of space still. So I don't need to do any further manipulations. Happy with the contents of both of those brood boxes. Most importantly, though, let's get inside, take a look at those flow supers and see if they're anywhere near honey extraction. So first sign is very good. It's heavy, a good heavy flow super. And then the next good sign, we've got bees up in that flow super working away. Let's pull out a couple of frames and see what they've given me. So good amount of honey up here, starting to cap it off. I think I went a little bit early last year and took it a bit too early, so this year I am going to give them a chance to fill all of that up, and that's why I've got the double brood on there to give them that buffer. And then it means it's going to be a lot easier for me to extract it all in one hit whilst I've got that buffer downstairs in the brood box. And I'm hoping if I bruise those stores in the brood box, Post-extraction, they are just going to come back upstairs and fill it all back up again very, very quickly indeed. I'm not sure why it is, I see loads of honey frames day in, day out, but I never really get as excited as the ones in my Flow Hive. Maybe it's just the way you turn that key and you can taste the honey as soon as it comes out of the hive. I think they're so much fun, I really do enjoy it. They're definitely a challenge, but a very rewarding challenge. Just give you a little close-up on this camera as well. You can see they're working out from the center, probably about 50 or 60% full, definitely capped over. No oilseed rape here, so no risk of it setting. We're very lucky our spring honey stays nice and runny all the way through the year. But as soon as this super's full, I'm definitely gonna extract it. So I hope you enjoyed that. If you wanna see more Flow Hives and fake Flow Hive action, definitely hit the subscribe button and I'll see you next time.
