Should I Buy A Fake Flow Hive? The Truth About Cheap Honey On Tap Hives

I've gone and bought myself a fake Flow Hive. Is it as good as the original Flow Hive? We'll have to wait and see. Hi, I'm Laurence Ederson, Black Mancin' Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Rewind a few months, I bought myself my original Flow Hive. Thanks again to Dean for giving it to me. I got a really good deal secondhand. I'm yet to use it though. Going to get loads of experience in this original Flow Hive this year, and I just couldn't resist it. I've gone and bought myself a brand new cheap imitation Flow Hive. In this video, I'm going to go through and show you all of the detail of the Flow Hive that I bought. I bought it for around £220. It's probably 25% the cost of the original Flow Hive. So if you're interested to find out which is better, the original Flow Hive or the fake Flow Hive, Definitely hit the subscribe button. There's going to be lots and lots of videos of both of these hives this year. But what I'm going to do in the meantime, I'm going to show you from top to bottom on the fake Flow Hive, do a little bit of comparison with the original one as well, and just give you my initial thoughts on how it looks coming out of the box. So the fake Flow Hive doesn't come painted in this very jazzy paint style. I've done this painting myself. This is my standard camouflage style, as you can see across all of my other hives here. And then I just painted this one up different just so you can see which one's the fake one and This one's the original one, so it doesn't come painted, it just comes as a standard pine wood. In this review, I'll go from top to bottom, and we're going to start with the roof. First thing you have to do is you have to put it together. I hate putting hives together. It's a real faff. I'm not very good at it. I'm really impatient, and I end up splitting the wood a lot. But I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the quality of the wood. All of the sizing was correct. That was always the thing that I was going to be really worried about when buying the fake I was worried whether the dovetail joints were going to fit together. I was worried about the thickness of the wood. I was worried about the quality of the wood. Was it going to split? Is it going to wear down quickly? And I have to say, the version that I got— and that is a real important caveat here, there's probably going to be 50 different versions of this fake Flow Hive. I'll show you the one that I got though, and I'll put up the link for anyone interested in getting it in the UK. The quality is pretty good. It's a pine roof though, The original Flow Hive roof is a cedar roof, so it's going to have a little bit more longevity to it. It's not going to wear down too much in the rain. Personally, I don't like wooden roofs. I don't like the original wooden roof on the Flow Hive, even though I've only had it for a little amount of time. I'd much prefer to see a nice copper roof or something metal, galvanized metal, anything just to protect that wood a bit. Doesn't matter whether it's pine or cedar, the roof is going to wear down over time. It comes as a flat-pack unit though, exactly the same style as the original Flow Hive roof. But you'll see there's a common theme all the way through this review. It's the little things that the original Flow Hive does so much better. So for example, on the roof here, on the original Flow Hive, you have these 2 little screws that just screw in, keep it nice and tight, and keep the roof on. You don't get that on the fake Flow Hive. They completely omitted it from the design. Doesn't exist. Also on the fake Flow Hive design, You have 2 holes going into the top of the roof. Completely different design. The original Flow Hive doesn't have that. I don't like entrances at the top. I don't like any vents at the top of the tool. So I'm going to block those 2 up. But it's just to show it's a different design. They've clearly tweaked it to kind of get away from potential design infringements, I would imagine. But it's just slightly different in terms of the design. So you can see here you've got your 2 holes in the roof. Comes as a flat pack kit. You've got to screw it all together yourself, but it's no issue. Goes together really, really nicely. And then on the inside, you get to see my glorious woodwork where I split it all over there. That's nothing to do with the fault of the wood. That's to do with me being really sloppy with the screws. It's no nonsense beekeeping, but that's taking no nonsense to a whole new level. I should have straightened that up a little bit. But in terms of the wood, wood looks good quality. It's just cheap pine wood. Few knots in it, nothing serious. Went together well, everything was square. Relatively happy with the roof. So in a comparison with the original Flow Hive and the fake Flow Hive, is the roof better on the fake one? Definitely not better. Slightly different, cheaper wood, missing a few of the little extra touches that you get on the roof. Is there a massive difference? Not really. If I had to pay for the extra, I'd probably go for the cheaper alternative. In fact, I'm going to get rid of both of these roofs. I don't like either of them. I'm going to replace the roofs with something a little bit more suitable. Something that can hold up to the Welsh rainy weather. So when it comes to the supers, there are real fundamental differences between the original Flow Hive and the fake Flow Hive. The design on the original one is so much better. It really is. It's polished. Everything's included within that design. So for example, these are from the original Flow Hive. These are the stand rests. They come as standard, they come ready to go, and then you fit it together and then you can transform the piece that comes out of the super into a stand. So you can see that on the original Flow Hive now you've got the stand pieces on there. They just fit onto the screws. You take out this part of the super, and then you've got a very neat shelf. That's how the original Flow Hive works. You look down to the fake Flow Hive now. I take out that same slot, and I'm just a bit lost. I'm thinking, well, I don't have any shelf brackets. I've got this shelf here. They've just not really thought it through. It's kind of like a half-finished design. And you know what? That is the story all the way through. Whether the fake Flow Hive have done that as a cost-cutting measure, and no doubt cost-cutting comes into it, or they need to fundamentally change elements of the design in order to not infringe on the design patterns of the original Flow Hive. One way or another, the fake Flow Hive is missing a lot of the design elements that the original Flow Hive does have. We'll continue on though. I'll pick all of those up as we go along. I'd say that's probably the biggest one for me in terms of that shelf. Just seems half-finished on the fake Flow Hive. Whereas on the original one, the design works, it's tried and tested, and all the bits are included. So back onto the fake Flow Hive here, and this piece here where you get access to turn the key, that bit of wood just sits on there, and obviously that just keeps on falling out. I showed you how annoying this was on the original Flow Hive, but on the original Flow Hive, if you look up at it, it is actually designed out. And I know I got this a bit wrong on my original review, but you can see that goes down there And then the roof holds it in. I know I'm missing this bit here, that was just off because of the painting, but that— but this missing bit here locks everything together and it keeps that stripping underneath there. This one, you look at the design of it and they've put the little handles on there. That's definitely how it's supposed to look. I checked with the manufacturer. I'll just try and balance that on. But then you try and put the roof on and you've got a real problem because it should sit down over them flush. And it just doesn't fit on properly. You can see it there, it pushes it down. Better off getting a view from that angle there. You can see it just doesn't fit. So I'm gonna have to do something to fit all of this. Again, this fake Flow Hive has got a little bit of wood that sits on there, locks everything together. But these handles, they clearly can't go there. The design is not well thought through, and that's what's really missing on this fake Flow Hive. Right, next thing you've got your windows, and again, looks very, very similar. So you've got your thin sheet Perspex, and you can see directly into the Flow Hive. Now I'm missing something on here again. I'm halfway through painting, but what comes with a fake Flow Hive is these little bits of wood like that. So it just slots on like that through a screw, and then that's what holds these bits in. Whereas on the real Flow Hive, you can see you get nice little metal latches. Not a huge difference, that one. Those kind of things I can definitely live without, but it is a nice touch to have them. Definitely feels a little bit more premium. All of the knobs on the original Flow Hive are metal. Much more sturdier. And here is the little roof screw that I was talking about that gives you the ability to screw that in, squeeze everything together to keep that roof on. So the fake Flow Hive is not doing too well so far. The roofs, I'd give it ever so slightly in favor to the original Flow Hive, but there's not much in it. Take the roof away though, go a level down into the super, and there's absolutely no debate whatsoever. The original Flow Hive design is so, so much better. You get a lot more design elements included, the metal knobs, things click together well. The roof holds in the bits that are going to fall out. The design is tested, it's proven, and it's definitely better than the fake Flow Hive, or at least the fake Flow Hive that I've got. Right, this is where you're spending your money in terms of fake Flow Hives and real Flow Hives for that matter. It's the Flow Hive design, and I just can't get over the way that they're so blatantly allowed to sell fake Flow Hives online. I would have thought the patents would have covered this. I would have thought it really would have stopped people selling them. First thing to say is I went with a company that claimed these were BPA-free. I have no idea whether that's true. When Flow Hive say that their frames are BPA-free, I believe them because they're a reputable company and they will have to verify that to the relevant authorities as well. Straight from China, I have no idea whether these are BPA-free. Did say so on the listing, but genuinely I have no idea. However, looking at these, they look really, really good. Like, I'm quite amazed how good these look in comparison to the original Flow Hive frames. I'll show you them close up in a minute and I'll put them next to each other. But I think if I mix these up, I'd probably struggle to tell which one is which. There are a couple of real easy giveaways in terms of markings, but if you look at them from afar, you generally wouldn't know which one is which. And again, I'll caveat this, and I'm caveating it to the nth degree, I have no idea if this is going to work. I know that the Flow Hive original frames do work. There's some quirks, obviously the honey can set inside them, you can have issues with them, But it's proven, the design is proven. Until I've used this and I've run this for a season, a couple of seasons, and I've seen how it's performed, I can't recommend it and say, yeah, these look the same, so I think they're going to perform the same. However, I will say they definitely look the same. They're really, really close in comparison. The big giveaways are the spacer screws that the original Flow Hive frames have on either side. Just have a little screw in there just to mean that it doesn't rattle around. Again, It's a polishing of that design. I can live without a screw. Hopefully these are going to work just as well as the originals, and I'm going to do lots of comparisons this year showing you the differences between both of these hives. I'm going to leave them in the same apiary, definitely going to take them away from their heather because it's going to be a nightmare to extract the heather from these. But let me pull out 2 of them now and I'll show you these frames side by side. Right, so here we go. Here are the 2 frames. The one at the back, that is the original Flow Hive frame, and then the one at the front, that is the fake Flow Hive frame. The first thing I notice is the material here is substantially thicker. Don't know why, if that's a cost-cutting exercise, if it's something that they just couldn't replicate, and I don't know what impact that's going to have on the ability of these Flow Hive frames to work. You look over here, it's much finer, like considerably finer, probably on a scale of about 50 or 60% finer. In terms of the wire banding though, really not much in it. Look very, very similar. I assume they're both stainless steel. Looking from the top, not much in it at all. You got a little bit of a change of color, but really not much to tell from the top. They look very similar. Maybe one small design element in that the original one's got a triple crossover there, and then the fake one, it doesn't cross over. So maybe in time, the fake one's going to come apart a little bit easier. We just don't know until we test that out. In terms of this side here, obviously the socket's missing from one of them, but there's really not much to show in there at all. I've tested these out with the same key. They both work really well. Nothing really to show either here. The one on the right-hand side is the real one. The one on the left-hand side is the fake one. The copy is really, really good. You just couldn't tell the difference unless you started to look in the corner, and then obviously you can see that branding. There's a lot more text on that side, but in terms of the plastic work, there's not much to tell them apart. So I've turned these around now. The one on the left is the original, and you can see on the original you've got the screw there. On the right, it's got the ability for you to put the screw in, but the screw isn't included. Just little things like that that are slightly annoying. So there you go, a little close-up of the differences between those 2 frames. Look very similar, don't they? There really isn't much in the way of overall design. There's a little bit of change in terms of branding, material thicknesses, and overall the quality of the material definitely feels better on the original Flow Hive. But I don't know how either of them are going to perform yet. I will update that later on in the season, so I'm not going to give you a verdict on which frame is better yet because I genuinely don't know. Right, in terms of the actual hive and the brood box that comes with it, I was pleasantly surprised with how good this brood box was. Okay, it's a little bit knotty, But not too bad. But the material's nice, it's dead straight, it went together perfectly. Like, it was a really, really good fit. Nothing split. I glued it, I nailed it, I've got it rock solid, completely square. I'm really, really happy with how well the fake one's come out. I was expecting lots of corners to be cut on this. And like I said, I'm really happy with the quality of the fake brood box in the fake Flow Hive. Right, let's take a look at the original Flow Hive brood box. And it brings me on to another point quickly, which is the fake one is a 7-frame variant. So the brood boxes are completely different sizes. So you do get a whole additional frame extra in the fake one. Obviously that's no good if the frames are rubbish, and I don't know that yet, but it is the bigger, wider size. So the original Flow Hive brood box, the one that I've got anyway, which is I think the first edition, that is just an 8-frame Langstroth box. And then the fake one, that is a 10-frame Langstroth box. In terms of the material though, I'm not sure what wood this is. It's definitely not pine though. Smells to me like cedar, but looking on the website, they use a lot of different woods in terms of the Flow Hive. So I'm not sure what the wood is, but you can tell it smells so nice. It smells like it's got protective oils in it. If it is cedar, I always much prefer a cedar box over a pine box. So the materials in the original Flow Hive, definitely a lot better. In terms of the wall thicknesses, the fake Flow Hive brood box has got ever so slightly thicker walls, only a couple of mil in it, but they are thicker. So they're pine, but they're a little bit thicker. And then the real Flow Hive brood box has obviously got handles, nice deep handles. I do prefer the handles in the real box, much easier to grip in my opinion. And then it's got the screws that fit in in order to hold that shelf when you're extracting honey. Only minor bits, but it does make a big difference to the overall usability between the original one and the fake So just give you a few close-ups now. We've got the nice handle there. This is the original Flow Hive brood box, nice deep V-shaped handle. You can tell from the wood, very different color. Be interesting to know what that wood is. Little things like that, they tell you it's a brood box. I like that. It's only a small thing, but it's nice, isn't it, that they just tell you what that brood box is? Here's something that really annoys me about the original one though. So this is an 8-frame Langstroth brood box. That's the original one. And then that down there, that is a fake or a different brand 8-frame box. Different size handle, but also just got a little lip there, and I don't see any reason why that lip should exist. Maybe the boxes are out of square a little bit, but I think that they're just a different size. You look there, the lip goes all the way around, and then if I bring you back over to this side here, you can see it's perfectly flush. Does annoy me when manufacturers do that. It's only a couple of mil. Why not just make it the exact same size as a standard 8-frame box? Why do it ever so slightly differently? And then a little close-up of the fake one there. Obviously we've got the different style handle. Nice deep handle though, really easy to hold. You've got a different style entrance at the front there. So the entrance is embedded into the brood box, which means it'd be difficult to use that as a double brood configuration unless you kept that one at the bottom. And then in terms of the material inside, yep, we've got a few knots, but it's reasonably good material. It's pine, so it's not going to last anywhere near as long as the cedar equivalent, but overall I'm pretty happy with the brood box. So who's the winner in the brood box between the original and the fake one? The original is an 8-frame, the fake one is a 10-frame. The original is cedar, I think the one that I've got here, and the fake one is pine. The original one has all the little details on where you can hold the shelf on it as well, but it's slightly out of shape in terms of the actual standard sizes for 8-frame. That's something that I do find a bit annoying. But again, I'm probably going to give the winner of this one to the original Flow Hive. Just feels a little bit better in terms of its quality. But this is the closest of them all. There's not a huge amount in it. And then finally, the floor. And here we go. This is chalk and cheese. This is the fake one, just a bit of wood. And then that is the original one. And I know you have to pay extra for the stand, but look at the difference. It is so much better. Nice and high off the ground, built-in varroa tray, nice little tray at the back that you can take this bit of wood out, take out your monitoring tray. You can see if the bees are moving around in the winter, you can do your varroa treatments, you can treat for oxalic acid, you can do loads with that tray. Such a better design. And again, another little thing, you've got your level built in there. You see this on various parts of this, on either side of the floor, I think it's dotted around other places as well. You get this level to make sure that you can get it completely level. And as you can see, I found a sweet spot there completely in the middle. In case you didn't realize, that was definitely a joke. But you compare that with the fake Flow Hive floor and it's barely more than a piece of wood. Quite cheap as well. Really thin wood. There is nothing that I like about this floor. It feels cheap. It feels like it's not going to last. It doesn't give me much flexibility in terms of what I'm going to do with it. Really, really not a fan of the fake Flow Hive floor. Right, so there you go. I've given you a top to bottom. We've spoken about the roof, the super, the Flow Hive frames, the brood box, and the floor. And from first impressions, one of these hives costs £850 new, the other one cost me about £225 new. So it's a little bit of an unfair comparison. And regardless of what I say today, it just doesn't matter, because if the fake Flow Hive frames don't work, And I have seen stuff online which is like maybe they don't work, then all of this is irrelevant. Because if they don't work, then you need to get the original Flow Hive. However, we'll do that later on in the year and check to see whether they do work or not. But I just wanted to give you that update in terms of a top-to-bottom look of some of the fake Flow Hives that are available on the market, and just to give you the heads up that I'm going to be testing it all the way throughout the year. So if you're interested in Flow Hives, you're looking at the originals, you're looking at the fake ones, Definitely hit the subscribe button. You will see lots and lots of detail on this channel this year, giving you real good in-depth looks into both of these beehives. So have you had any experience with the original Flow Hive? Have you had any experience, good or bad, with the fake Flow Hives as well? Let me know in the comments. I am a Flow Hive novice. There's so many experts out there and I can learn a lot from you. So if there's any good tips that you've got for either the original or the fake, anything you want to say, just stick it in the comments. Be great to hear from you. I hope you enjoyed that video though. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.