okay so maybe you've already seen my videos regarding the flow hive and the
flow has been improved there is a flow hive 2 and that's what this is in this
box that we're opening here and just give you the first-person view of
opening it up on what's inside they even want you to send your bee puns to flow
hive Tom here's the gradual congratulations letter welcoming you to
the flow hive group here is the much needed instruction manual here for your
flow hive assembly everything's made in Australia and the wood that we're
looking at here is Australian cedar so it's gonna be good-looking trust me
let's pull away this paper all the paper that they included is compostable
there's some good articles on there and recommend you read them if you have the
time it's gonna take some time to put this together we're looking at the roof
components here close up of the flow emblem that's nicely cut into it and all
these wooden parts are pretty good-looking as far as I'm concerned as
you know if you've been following my channel at all I've put together every
kind of flow hives that they make and I've had great success with them I
really enjoy it here's the Queen excluder that comes with it and of
course all the components in the box that you need the flow frames themselves
are in a separate box this is a close-up of the Queen excluder looks kind of open
and I think this time for this small flow hive - I will be using it and these
are the frames for your foundationless honeycomb if you like to do that I have
racks of honeycomb in my be shed so it's ready to go I'm not going to use those
here and this is the bottom board cover it's aluminum and there is a kind of
blue tint plastic protection over it that you can have to peel the way that
film this is what it looks like after you peel it away it's actually pretty
rigid pretty good and I'm hoping that these openings are too small for bees to
go through probably talk about that a little bit later but we definitely don't
want bees going through the bottom there and I'll show you why this is a tray
that goes in and these are all the components that come packed in the box
in the tray they even include sandpaper this time if you
an orbital sander and it has little velcro thing on it this is the type of
sandpaper that goes on that and there's even a little tool here I'm gonna use my
own tools but everything is included if you wanted to just use the tools that
are in the box and these are all the seated components everything is
fantastic the woodwork here absolutely looks flawless now this is the time
before you start to put everything together if you're gonna personalize the
box do it now pull these panels out and paint your
designs on them I'm gonna do pyrography on this panel and here you go this is my
little bee in flight so this is gonna be my brood box at the bottom and I burn
this in with a Parag Rafi unit so this is actually engraved into the cedar with
heat so I've enjoyed doing that I've probably done six of these on different
boxes so far and I'm having a lot of fun personalizing my bee hives with
pyrography so that's my be in flight I also did another one later oh yeah don't
forget to sign your work and put the date on it that way I'm gonna be able to
keep track of all this unit as many years down the line some people buy Heat
brands to brand their bee boxes but you can get a pyrography kit a lot cheaper
now these are the components for the base and they're all marked there are
laser etched numbers and identifying names inside each of these panels so it
really takes the guesswork out but don't skip over reading those instructions
this is the level that goes into that removable vent on the back and of course
you get the flow hive hat with the flow veil and I have these hanging in my
garage and they're super convenient to hand out to people when you go to talk
about your bees one of the differences for the flow hive to of course is the
fact that we have two viewing panels one on each side for that honey super and
then we're going to get into the instructions there is a roof alignment
block there and again the sandpaper I mentioned and the little tool if you
want to see other videos by honey flow calm themselves follow this website to
honey flow comm slant assembly and you'll be able to see their guidelines I
use exterior wood glue also when I put my components together this stuff holds
up really well and it does not disco would work if you're gonna put a finish
on the exterior of your beehives I recommend this Minwax indoor/outdoor
helmsman spar urethane it's holding up really well I use it on all my pine
boxes I personally am NOT going to put that on this flow hive - these are the
metal components that are part of that adjustable support system they're really
well made they're welded up looking at these weld nuts I'm not of course going
to inspect them even though I have a background and non-destructive tests and
inspection these things are really well-made it's heavy duty I was anxious
to see it also notice that these bottom pads which are a black rubber they tilt
in all directions so that you can also adapt to uneven ground as well as height
adjustment so that's pretty cool the other thing I liked is the fact that
these nuts are really long so I don't think you can get enough honey into a
flow hive that would overwhelm those supports are nice and strong and of
course these nice brass pull knobs that replace the old wooden ones that we had
before that sometimes came out these are gonna do really well and every
packet is marked now the roof unlike the previous versions that came out this one
has a little notches built into it and you do not have to assemble the roof
panels these two come in two pieces on each side and then you kind of hand
align them and guests but the alignment grooves are already there so that guess
work is gone and they go right on I recommend you glue them and screw them
down and then what I do I flip them over and run the glue on the inside - these
are the new thumb screws that go in that will hold your roof to your top box so
it goes it overlays the inner cover and actually screws into and grips onto your
honey super or if you're just using the deep box when you're starting out it'll
do that now these are the windows they come with film on both sides of them and
one side is tinted green don't forget to pull off the clear one on the other side
you might have to fiddle with that a little while this is the interior view
of one of the honey supers and of course they took the
time to laser market so you don't make any mistakes so that was convenient and
interesting to see that they did that you'll notice here I had these red
corner clamps they make sure to hold all of my joints at a perfect 90 degree I'm
gonna give you links in the video description of the tools that I show and
use here I don't know how I ever get along without these aluminum corner
blocks I use them for all of my wooden ware and it's called the can-do clamped
it is just a different thing this is of wood and you don't have to guess about
that 90 degrees and if you're gonna glue things up which I do now I glue it then
I put the screws in you don't want that to be out of 90 degrees you really
notice when you stack it up and this is of course my honey super I did another
pyrography design this bee of course has resources and it's getting nectar and
has the pollen on its hind legs so I thought that was appropriate to adorn my
super so here it is all together this is not a super there's an access panel on
each side we're showing that here and the nice windows on the inside and
pretty similar to the previous versions of course this is the eighth frame six
frame version eight frame Langstroth six frames of flow frames and again I'm just
showing you you match them up six to six seven to seven and so on the guesswork
is really gone I guess maybe in the past people had problems matching up the
right components now in the past these shims that push your flow frames
together we're made out of wood now it looks like it's a clear lucite these are
nice and durable and of course won't take on moisture or expand or rod and
here it is installed inside they're just shims that go to the sides and push the
flow activated frames together and keep them nice and snug so that was an
interesting bonus there I'm just showing you here that I clamp it up I use the
corner clamps to keep the 90 and I use a bar clamp to draw them and close then I
put the screws in
I think part clamps you can get just about anywhere and I did use of course a
power drill always verify your corners are 90s by putting that 90-degree square
in there and they're perfect of course and these are the components that go
with the support system so this is the bottom now they've done away with the
traditional bottom landing board design and we're gonna show that in a minute
again I'm just showing you how I clamped these up and I leave them sat for a
couple hours till the glue takes and then I run the screws in and we're good
to go and they even mark it like I said before
base you know and so on always check double check just like measuring twice
cutting once we're not cutting anything here I did not have to shape or modify
anything all the parts went together absolutely perfectly these are laser-cut
that's why the edges are black and here's that landing board the landing
board is on the tilt you do have to hand hold it right up against it there but I
lined it up with those end joints and that was pretty nice there's two screws
that go in for it these are the metal rails that are inside one will support
the tray that slides in and out and here's the back access to that the other
supports that aluminum bottom board cover and here's that leveling indicator
that's built in and of course the brass knob underneath and this is the vent
that we can flip it over and open for more ventilation or we can remove it all
together and I'll show you that later too
but here's the tray the tray is nice and heavy-duty it's thick material this is
where I'm hoping that my hygienic varroa resistant line of bees will be dropping
dead and chewed up varroa and I'll pull the tray out of the back and I'll be
able to look at that up close so hopefully we get some pretty decent
macro video of that later this is showing the fit of that aluminum cover
that's inside on the landing board so it should allow debris and as I've said
before varroa hopefully will fall through this and it overlays that
leading edge of the box really nice I was impressed by the fit the tolerances
here are super tight and along the back to went nice and snug up against the
back there so if you pull that vent off the back nothing's going to come in
there and access your colony through the back there will be no sneak
tax from wasps and hornets and things like that so really nice and the landing
board matches the width of that base support and it tilts down so a rain
water stuff gets shed these are the components I think this support
adjustable stand system is optional but it comes with a lot of wood here and
there two pieces for each corner and you screw them on put them together at this
point those are cosmetic because all the structural support is coming from the
metal itself and the threaded components of this are nice and strong I just can't
see this being overwhelmed it is plenty stout for even a beehive that's loaded
with honey so just showing you an interior view here of how it's connected
and how its threaded through there very good job on this and of course these are
gonna be sheltered pretty much from the weather we'll see how that goes so now
we have it outside and I chose this stone bench that I made as a test thing
to level it up and kind of show you how it's going to look now this is the side
level and it is marked on the level when it's like that it is in the Tilted back
position so that you could describe it extract honey so that's why I'm showing
it this way if your hive is tilted front to back that does not impact the way
your bees are gonna create comb I'm using the Acorn plastic frames here
which I've been getting into over the last couple of years and I love these
they're triple dipped with wax and my bees really go after them and draw out
the comb right away we recently had a bear tear apart some hives and the wax
plastic foundation held up the best of any of them the wooden foundation just
gets torn apart so here it is with the bottom box and of course we put in that
Queen excluder and you want to make sure and put that on I have demonstrated in
past videos that if you don't put that excluder in there your queen can get up
in there and will possibly lay eggs and develop brood in your flow frames and we
don't want that so here it is now with the flow super on so we've got the
support system we've got the brood box and now we've got the honey super with
the flow frames installed and this is pretty tidy again
system is much like the other flow heights that have come out the flow
frames themselves are unchanged so they activate the same the components are
interchangeable the adjustment screw here on the back so that you can slide
it to the back to make sure that they're nice and snug there to eliminate B space
and make sure that they all line up correctly I did not have to turn those
screws again the box was pretty accurate here's my customizing on the front where
the landing board is and of course should pull honey out from the back and
the flow super there has the side panel access now we've got that nice thick
inner cover and you have a plug that you can cover that up or you can remove it
to allow ventilation for the bees to have access or you can put a feeder up
there so again everything is improved materially the thicknesses are nice the
fit is flawless the grain of the wood the cedar is fantastic I couldn't
imagine better wood than this and keep in mind that you can put a finish on it
but it's not required because this is cedar and cedar it's naturally weather
resistant so we're gonna see how that goes and then there's that top retaining
thumbscrew when you first screw these in they're kind of tight but of course
you're cutting threads into that hole that's been pre-drilled and once you've
done that a couple of times it's much easier I also recommend that once you
find that little indentation on that upper box so you go ahead and drill a
little hole to receive that up there so this is it it's all together it's
complete and it's ready to go it's ready for bees so and this is what it would
look like if you did not have the optional adjustment pace this is the
adjustment base I recommend you get it though because now you can put your hive
anywhere and see the level there it's right on center Center side-to-side is
critical front to back not so critical that when you're going to extract honey
it is nice to be able to tilt that just by adjusting the screws and I'm just
going to show you how we access it turn the lock pull that panel out and of
course his pal doubles now as the shelf for extracting honey so I'm just going
to show you how those components work we're not going to actually extract
honey because we don't even have bees in this hive yet but as of my posting of
this video the bees are already inspecting it and we're good
two primes warm season here I put a swarm commander in there and I'm
expecting possibly a volunteer swarm to just move into this thing on their own
we have lots of bees in the area so here's the sheltie included shelf
supports again we're at the back of the hive and we have to remove that upper
cover which is how you access it to put the actuator in which is just a
stainless steel bar you pull the plug out and you put in your tube for
extraction now this is my modified tube I got food grade 90 degree elbows and
I've put them together to make my own method for removing the honey and I'm
going to show you the tube by itself that comes with each float frame each
tubes with each float frame so you have your own normally this would just come
out and drip into an open jar I found that by adding the elbow and extending
the tubes I can put it through a recap mason jar lid which is what these are I
can put a link of course in the video description on that too but I use these
on all my flow hives now and the reason I do that is because when I put these on
a jar and I open up the pop top on that it is perfectly fit for the tubes that
come out of your flow frames and then just put that in like this here and now
you don't have to worry about any other bees or wasps or anything else getting
into your honey and you can get as much as half a gallon from a frame from a
flow frame so you want to ideally put if you're gonna walk away from it put a
half gallon jug out there with a recap mason jar lid on it and just let it
drain right in and you can go about your business and work on other hives and so
on also when you're activating this I only put the bar halfway in and then I
let the honey run out you can see other videos that show how this works and then
once you see the diameter of that tube not being filled with honey as it's
raining out you push it the rest of the way in and drain the rest of the honey
and that prevents overflow and we have an early forwarder here that's already
coming to inspect this hive again as of this morning I have lots of scouts
checking this out so I might just luck out and have a bee colony move in I have
lots of hives that are ready to swarm right now
and I think they're gonna find the floor hype too to be a pretty favorable
environment now you may want to go ahead and start with just your brute box and
put the lid and then your cover on that and wait till your bees build up in my
case here I'm moving this whole unit as is with the honey super on and I'm gonna
put it right in my bee yard and we're gonna see how well the bees go to it and
with the queen excluder and of course there's that varroa tray pulled out here
so you can see how that works and I'm also showing you how I arrange my kit
here this is just a fishing tackle box that I found and I find that it's a
great way to organize the tools and stuff that you're gonna use for
beekeeping so I of course have those brackets for the flow hive to kept in
the top here I have spare parts I have queen cages
I have mason jar lids everything that you might need to make sure that you
have a one spot if you've ever dealt with swarms you might run around like a
chicken with your head cut off getting all your stuff together I have it set up
as a grab-and-go and of course I enjoyed customizing the box if you use
pyrography and burn the wood even when it ages this is still gonna look good
and it's also gonna reduce the chance that somebody's going to steal your hive
if it's personalized and has your name all over it you're gonna keep your stuff
I hope you enjoyed this presentation about the flow hive too and if you want
to look into it there's a link in the description that shows I know people
gonna ask what they sell for I rather than tell your prices I think I'm gonna
give you the link and then you can look at all the stuff that they offer
so have fun keeping bees I hope that your environment is going to support
them this year and I hope that you found this video beneficial thanks for
watching as always