#Flow hive beehive how to
#Flow hive beehive professional

Wood: cypress, pinewood, fir, spruce, cedar

High-quality food-grade plastic constructionĦ to 8 frames made of solid plastic material Today, we are going to review two popular types of beehives: Langstroth and the Flow Hive, outlining the standout features and how they differ.

The search for a perfect beehive can turn out challenging, especially if you have no idea of which beehive type, brand or style to consider. Baird will stick with the traditional hives for the bulk of his honey-producing operation.If you’re considering a career in beekeeping, get the right beehive.

One concern is that the FlowHive produces a lower yield than a traditional hive, a pattern that Baird has noticed in his operation.

#Flow hive beehive professional

“Our stand is that beekeepers are responsible for the health of their bees and this requires knowledge, skill and care.(I) am very proud that the invention of the FlowHive has brought tens of thousands more people into beekeeping.”įor all the speed and utility the FlowHive has to offer, professional beekeepers also have critiques of the product. “We actively encourage aspiring beekeepers to join a bee club and/or to connect with a mentor beekeeper. “We provide material on colony health and pests and diseases on our website and lots of educational videos and other content,” Anderson said in an email statement. Stuart Anderson, the co-creator of the FlowHive, said his company educates new beekeepers. “The honey harvest is really the tip of the iceberg in terms of what a beekeeper needs to do maintain healthy hives,” Caza said. Shawn Caza, a long-time Toronto beekeeper, said he knew of aspiring beekeepers who bought a FlowHive and bees, but “planned a vacation during the time of the year when one would normally start a new colony.” But when you have honey bees and they all die in the winter because you can’t take care of them properly, it’s accepted.” “If you’re a farmer of cattle, and your cattle were sick and they all died in the winter, that wouldn’t be acceptable. what you’re signing up for when you get your own bees,” Chorabik said. The FlowHive, said Chorabik, can make new beekeepers think that the process is much less involved that it actually is, which puts the bees at risk of being attacked by pests and contracting diseases.

#Flow hive beehive how to

“Many people have gotten into beekeeping because of the FlowHive, but don’t know how to bee keep,” said Peter Chorabik, a Toronto beekeeper who runs over 250 hives. One in every three bites of food we eat also relies on bees for pollination, experts say.īut some beekeepers are concerned that adopting the FlowHive for small-scale beekeeping could do more harm than good for bees. Instead of taking several hours, the FlowHive can extract its honey in about 15 minutes in the ideal warm and dry conditions, said Ian Baird, owner of Terre Bleu, a lavender farm in Milton that also produces honey.Īmid concern for a decreasing honeybee population in recent years, more people are pitching in part-time to keep the honey flowing. In the FlowHive, the bees do their work inside the hive, and a few cranks of a lever split the comb, allowing pure, ready-to-eat honey to travel through tubes and into a bottle. In a traditional hive, beekeepers have to sedate the bees, remove the wooden frames from the hive, “decap” the honey from the frames, process it in a centrifuge, and then filter it. The product is renowned for skipping many steps in the usually multifaceted honey extraction process with the simple turn of a lever. The FlowHive, created by Australian father-son duo Stuart and Cedar Anderson in 2015, earned nearly 40,000 backers and raised over $13 million (U.S.) becoming the top all-time campaign on crowdfunding site Indiegogo. A method that’s supposed to make beekeeping simpler for novices by providing honey on tap has drawn criticism from some experts, who say it may encourage casual beekeepers to set up an apiary but not put in the hard work needed to maintain it.