okay even though I've pretty much said and shown all there is to say about the
flow hives and the flow supers today I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about
something I've found it's from a company called recap mason jars and they make
lids for your glass mason jars that serve a variety of purposes and they've
put stuff out for beekeepers but what was really neat for me was when I was
looking at these lids and that pop top comes open it's 3/4 3/4 of an inch so I
was thinking maybe I could make elbows for the flow frames and we could stick
those inside these lids and then there would be no bees or wasps or
Yellowjackets getting into the honey while we're draining flow frames and
when you get flow frames you get lots of these tubes so you can play around with
them you really only need you know one or two tubes during extraction so I took
one here and I cut each of them at 45 degrees and then I just glued them
together with 100% silicone to make a 90 degree elbow and then this is a
food-grade 90 degree elbow that I found on Amazon schedule 40 that thing is
expensive I paid $11 for that plastic elbow but I think that's overkill
because it's really designed for industrial food processing equipment
this is the underside of one of the recap mason jar lids and it shows they
have replaceable gaskets for those and these things right out of the package
are basically ready for the flow hive so today in this video I'm gonna take this
out to the apiary and we're gonna hook these up and see how they work the
advantage is if you've watched my past videos I've always had to catch and
collect primarily Yellowjackets that come around when we're extracting honey
from flow frames and this company is actually targeting flow hive
so it's interesting plus there's this lid that goes in a normal quart size jar
that pops open so if you had candy Tunney you could get a spoon in there
but I'm not really interested in that one I like the one that's got the pour
spout so and this is showing the wide mouth lids on the right is the
traditional ball jar metal lids now they have a plastic lining on the inside but
over time they do rust a little bit and they're designed for canning I'm not
interested in canning I'm just collecting honey and oftentimes the wind
will be blowing or as I said bugs try to get into the honey while you're
extracting and I think that this method is going to contain it while we're
extracting from the flow frames so now we're out in the apiary we have a
beautiful sunny day you can see that the Sun is high we're doing this around noon
ish and that's because during this time of day the bees are out working and very
few of them we're in the hive don't forget to tilt your hive back this hive
just has a flow super on it if it were a regular flow hive they're already tilted
back so you don't have to do that and here they are so I have two half gallon
jars and I'm just giving you a close-up look of these flow frames and they're
capped honey and this will be the third extraction from this particular flow
super so these have been in use for over a year we have high wind conditions
today I noticed that sometimes people set out their jars to collect from their
flow frames and the honey while it's dripping down to the jar it
just blows out to the side so these are going to eliminate that I'm also showing
you a close-up of how I set up my shelf I made what I'm calling a sag shelf I
use these table saw supports with rollers on them to support the shelf but
that's actually too tall so by making a modified shelf it'll sit low enough that
I can put these half gallon jars on and now you've probably seen me do this
several times before but I'm doing it again we're just pulling out the little
plugs at the bottom of the flow frames and we're going to stick in my homemade
elbow here on the right which is just the flow tubes that come with the flow
frames and I cut them and glue them with 100% silicone
so we're gonna compare that with here on the left that expensive food grade
industrial plastic elbow and we're gonna see if there's any difference you know
obviously the one on the left is really strong the one on the right is just kind
of a butt joint where you just push the two pieces together but I see no reason
why they wouldn't hold up so and now we're just pulling off the upper access
and we're using that screwdriver tip on the flow handles here and you're gonna
hear them kind of crack a little bit as we open these up because they're sealed
pretty well with propolis from the bees and remember we always start off I'm
only sticking them in about half the distance from the front to the back
we're not opening the entire length of these flow frames at one time because as
we've seen in the past sometimes it overwhelms the drain tube and then
there'll be more leaking into the hive so we've learned to avoid that by doing
partials and again also not opening a whole bunch of frames at once so we have
two half gallon glass jars here made by Baal and then of course we have the two
wide-mouthed recap mason jar lids with the pop tops and the other thing is -
we're gonna leave these lids on because now they're just port hops but I want
you to see look at how snug that fits no bug is gonna get in there so it also
leaves enough so there's kind of an air gap too we don't want to create air
pressure inside and slow down the filling process and this kind of shows
you a look at my sag bench here my sag shelf that allows you to put your
support lower than the actual rollers that are supporting the shelf and the
one on the right is filling a little faster than the one on the left and
that's because I don't think I opened up enough of the frames at first
and I used half gallon jars because we know from past experience that there's
never been more than half a gallon of honey in a frame on the flow hive so
that's pretty safe you don't have to stand there worried about swapping out
quart jars for example now some people do take their jars and they put
cellophane over it and I'm also seeing on YouTube yes I look at the other flow
high videos out there and I see that people like to hook up like four or five
tubes at once and run them right into that five-gallon bucket or what people
call a honey bucket that's got the honey cane at the bottom and I'm gonna caution
you not to do that because frame by frame especially this time of year
we're in August and it's August 23rd this time of year the frames have unique
flavors of honey in them if you combine them all into one big container again
you're mixing the the flavors and you're not benefiting from that individuality
frame by frame and again this is just a close-up look at the diametrical
clearance here between that three-quarter inch tube in the opening
on these recap lids it's like they were made for it's really perfect and we're
almost up to the 1500 milliliter level here so we are getting full loads out of
these frames and I did do water testing on these after we were done and it
ranged anywhere from 15% water to 17% water so it was all really good now an
advantage to to setting them on the bench and putting tubes in like this is
you can leave them there and go do other things you don't have to stand guard as
I used to and catch the Yellowjackets as they came around I used to pull them out
with chopsticks that's done the wind can blow as strong as it wants to and these
things are completely covered and completely protected
so you could go look at wildflowers for example you'll wander around you can do
other bee chores in your beat yard you don't have to sit there and keep watch
over your flow frames while they're draining just go away and come back
later you definitely don't want to close them off too early anyway because if you
close off your flow jars too soon while you're collecting honey the trough at
the bottom actually will fill up with honey so you definitely want to leave
them long enough for them to completely drain when it goes to just a little bit
of Dripping that's when you know you can close them up and cap off your jars and
go back to taking care of your bees or doing whatever else you want to do we
make sure to grow lots of pollen producing plants on my property
even though bees get several miles to forage it's always helpful to have as
much pollen local to your bees as possible nectar is another thing that
the pollen is really what's going to keep your hives strong so in summary you
know don't waste your money as I did on this 90 degree schedule for tea elbow
make your own cut 45s on those tubes that are already provided by Flo and
just get one hundred percent silicon sealer and butt joint those two together
and you've got a 90 degree elbow get those recap mason jar lids too and
you're all set thanks for watching I hope this helped you get thinking about
how you might better control the honey coming out of your flow hive