We added the super to our Flow Hive!

So back in July I shared a photo of our beautiful Flow Hive with the bee nucleus we got in April.

Our bees have been busy all winter and I noticed they were starting to beard on the front of the hive. Being that we have only just hit spring, it wasn't because of the heat so I opened them up to find they had started building comb between the frames and the lid as they had run out of room for honey!

I saved the honey from the clean up of the lid and it is delicious! We have heard that the bees can take a while to start using the flow frames for the first time. With their hive being so full we pulled out a frame of honey and gave them an empty frame they can start on until they're ready to use the flow frames.

Now they have plenty of room and they are as busy as always! It's not the best photo sorry, I had bees bouncing off me while I was standing in the flight path. It was overcast and windy, it still surprises me how busy European bees are in bad weather. Our natives bees are much smaller and don't leave their hive on days like this!

We chose the flow hive so we didn't need honey extraction equipment.As we mainly want honey, the flow hive made the most sense for us, especially since we can only have one hive. Which means, for the frame we removed we will be doing the mash and strain technique. We will use this technique whenever I need some wax for my homemade hand balm.

I'll let you know how we go with our first mash and strain experience, and hopefully soon we can share our first flow harvest with you!