Honey flow is a crucial period in beekeeping when bees have the opportunity to produce an abundance of honey. This period is not about honey flowing, but rather the availability of nectar. Honey flow occurs when one or more major nectar sources are in bloom and the weather is favorable for bees to fly and collect the nectar in abundance. It is essential for beekeepers to know when their primary surplus nectar flow begins, as it helps determine when to add supers, work backward from making splits, and harvest.
Nectar is a sweet liquid secreted by plants that bee colonies use as a food source. It is produced in flowers to attract pollinators and to produce seeds. A nectar dearth or honey dearth occurs when bee colonies can no longer find nectar. For Flow Hive beekeepers, it is important to leave the Flow Super in the garage until the bees have filled their brood box. Bees prefer a warm and cozy environment, with temperatures between 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) inside their cluster.
Another important aspect of honey flow is the time when a plant is flowering and secreting the heaviest amount of nectar. Several factors affect nectar secretion, and the honey flow is a sweet spot when bees can make an abundance of honey. However, the honey flow is not always observable, as bees can’t get in and out of the hive fast enough.
In summary, knowing when a nectar flow begins is crucial for beekeepers to ensure their bees have access to nectar and can effectively manage their colonies.
| Article | Description | Site |
|---|---|---|
| What Is Honey Flow and What It Means to Beekeepers | The honey flow is a sweet spot in time when bees have the opportunity to make an abundance of honey. With that said, this period isn’t really … | thebfarm.com |
| How to Recognise a Nectar Flow. | By a nectar flow we mean the time when a plant is flowering and secreting the heaviest amount of nectar. Several factors affect nectar secretion … | beelistener.co.uk |
| How do you know when the flow is over? | When there is a flow on, the bees can’t get in and out of the hive fast enough! Dozens a second will be landing and taking off, with the ones … | beesource.com |
📹 Beekeeping In A Flow Hive: Will It Really Work Or Fail?
Beekeeping is all about the honey and now it’s time to see IF the Flow Hive will deliver us some delicious honey or will it fail?
Do Bees Swarm During A Strong Flow?
During a strong honey flow, the risk of bee swarming increases, particularly in the weeks leading up to and during the flow itself. Swarming is a natural reproductive behavior where approximately 60% of a colony, including the queen, leaves in search of a new home. This process can significantly impact the annual harvest. Swarming typically occurs in spring when there is a light nectar flow; bees perceive the onset of spring as an indicator of abundant food sources and will swarm to find them.
While swarming can cause anxiety for onlookers, it's a vital aspect of a bee's life cycle, integral to colony survival and expansion. It can also happen at other times, depending on environmental factors within and outside the hive. During prime swarm season, beekeepers should be proactive in managing colonies to prevent swarming by ensuring that the brood nest remains clear and spacious. Swarms are usually at their peak in April and May in regions like the Mid-Atlantic, coinciding with increased nectar availability.
When significant nectar flow is present, bees focus on honey production instead of swarming. Observing this behavior and understanding the conditions that drive it can help beekeepers maintain healthy colonies and optimize honey yields.
How Does Nectar Flow Affect Honey Production?
The efficiency of honey production is significantly influenced by the duration of nectar flow, as short periods can challenge beekeepers. In search of nectar, bees often fly longer distances or visit more flowers in a short time, particularly when faced with adverse weather conditions like rain. Rain can wash away nectar from blooms, reducing availability, and extended rainy periods can halt nectar production altogether. The "honey flow" occurs when nectar-producing plants bloom, providing an abundance of nectar for bees.
This period can last from a few days to several weeks, depending on regional differences, and encompasses thousands, if not millions, of flowers. Researchers have assessed nectar sugar dynamics per flower multiple times daily to better understand these patterns. Adequate soil moisture is essential for a good honey flow, as excessive rain hinders bees' collection efforts.
Understanding the bloom periods of nectar-producing plants is crucial for maximizing honey production. Timing, altitude, and selecting suitable bee races can enhance the likelihood of a successful honey flow. During this critical period, bees gather and store nectar to meet dietary needs and create surplus honey that nourishes the colony during lean times. Generally, the three main nectar flows coincide with pollen flows, benefiting overall honey yield, given that most major prairie nectar plants provide pollen.
The conversion of nectar into honey involves reducing its water content, allowing for proper storage. In summary, nectar flow is vital for honey production; limited nectar translates to limited honey. Therefore, finding locations rich in nectar is essential for beekeepers to optimize honey yields.
What Is Flow In Beekeeping?
Flow in beekeeping denotes a rich period characterized by favorable weather and an abundance of blooming nectar sources, enabling bees to gather nectar extensively. This honey flow period is especially advantageous in regions with extended summer daylight hours, enhancing honey production significantly. Nectar flow, also known as honey flow, occurs when nectar-producing plants fully bloom, leading to a marked increase in nectar availability. Typically, it spans from spring onward, providing essential sustenance for the bees and their colonies.
During honey flow, bees collect enough nectar to meet their immediate dietary needs while also storing surplus honey for future use, particularly benefiting the colony during times of scarcity. The duration of this flow can vary based on regional ecological factors, lasting from a few days to several weeks, with numerous plants contributing to the influx of nectar. For beekeepers, understanding the timing of nectar flow is crucial, as it directly influences the health and productivity of their colonies.
Nectar flow forms the foundation of the beekeeping calendar, where flowers release nectar, a vital carbohydrate source for bees. The relationship between nectar production and bee welfare is complex and requires careful observation and understanding by beekeepers. Each year, professional beekeepers refine their knowledge of nectar flow dynamics to optimize honey production.
Additionally, innovations like the Flow Hive allow for honey extraction with minimal bee disturbance, revolutionizing the harvesting process. This method facilitates easy access to honey while still promoting the well-being of the bee colony. Ultimately, recognizing and capitalizing on the honey flow period is essential for successful beekeeping, ensuring both honey production and colony health.
What Is Nectar Flow In Beekeeping?
Nectar flow in beekeeping is fundamentally linked to the seasonal blooming of plants, primarily from spring to summer. This phenomenon, known as the nectar flow season, is when flowers produce nectar, which is crucial for bees' dietary needs and maintaining their colonies. The nectar flow can last from a few minutes to several hours, depending on environmental conditions. During this period, often termed honey flow, bees gather an abundance of nectar to meet their immediate needs as well as store surplus honey for later use, making it a vital time for both bees and beekeepers.
Understanding nectar flow is essential for beekeepers because it directly affects the health and productivity of their colonies. The onset of a nectar flow depends on multiple factors such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, and soil conditions, influencing the amount of nectar produced by flowers. As nectar becomes available, bees collect it and convert it into honey by reducing its water content to about 18% through evaporation. When this honey is capped, it signifies that it is ripe and ready for harvesting.
Nectar flows can begin with the blooming of flowers located several miles away from the hive, which means beekeepers cannot solely rely on nearby plants to predict the flow. During a strong nectar flow, colonies may prioritize nectar collection over brood-rearing activities, highlighting the significance of this period. Ultimately, recognizing when a honey flow occurs, characterized by favorable weather and abundant nectar sources, is key for successful beekeeping and optimizing honey production.
How Does Nectar Flow Affect Bees?
During nectar flow periods, bees actively forage for nectar, flying from flower to flower, which sustains individual bees and fosters colony growth. This gathering method directly impacts honey bee production, as an increase in available nectar correlates with greater honey yields. Understanding the nectar flow dynamics is crucial for effective hive management. Several factors, primarily seasonal changes and weather conditions, influence nectar flow, also known as honey flow, which occurs when nectar-producing plants blossom and significantly augment nectar production.
Typically occurring in spring, the nectar flow period is vital for bees' daily lives and the prosperity of their colonies. Rain during a flow can confine bees to their hives, limiting foraging just as plants release nectar or pollen. Though bees may start foraging as flowers bloom in spring, they often don't yield enough surplus nectar initially, differentiating a nectar flow from the more abundant honey flow, which can last from a few days to several weeks.
Beekeepers depend on understanding the nectar flow to enhance colony health and productivity. A comprehensive guide to nectar flow will examine its essence, timing, influencing factors, and strategies to boost honey yields, alongside management advice during the honey flow. The age of flowers affects nectar secretion, prompting migratory beekeepers to target burnt areas for heather. The ambient temperature, humidity, recent rainfall, and root depth are additional factors that determine nectar flow.
Nectar, a primary carbohydrate source for bees, plays a fundamental role in honey production. By monitoring hive weight changes, beekeepers gain insights into nectar flow and can maximize their colony’s efficiency during strong flows. Collectively, these elements are crucial for successful beekeeping practices.
Why Is Nectar Flow Important?
Understanding nectar flows is essential for beekeepers, as they directly influence bee survival and colony health. Nectar flow, also called honey flow, occurs when nectar-producing plants bloom and significantly increase nectar availability, providing bees with a primary carbohydrate source necessary for energy and honey production. Recognizing periods of nectar flow and dearth—when nectar is scarce—is crucial since dearths leave bees vulnerable to starvation and robbing.
Nectar flow typically commences in spring as the first flowers emerge, leading to bees collecting nectar and converting it into honey. Identifying the onset of primary surplus nectar flow helps beekeepers decide when to add supers, make splits, or harvest honey. It is a key factor in beekeeping calendars and planning, ensuring that gardening choices optimize foraging opportunities for bees.
High nectar flow can last for several weeks, allowing bees to gather significant amounts of nectar from either a single plant species or multiple species blooming simultaneously. The nuances of blossom timing and nectar availability are critical to beekeeper management practices. Beekeepers can enhance their understanding of nectar flows through field observations and hive measurements.
Moreover, nectar is vital as it contains various sugars that affect honey properties, influencing its quality and flavor. Honey flow indicates a period when conditions are ideal for bees to gather and store surplus honey, fulfilling their dietary needs and ensuring the colony's sustainability. Therefore, awareness of nectar flows enables beekeepers to support their bees effectively, maximizing honey production and contributing to overall colony vitality.
📹 Beekeeping. Is the nectar flow starting?
A few things: Opening the frame 1/4 at a time is correct but allow most of the honey to flow out of that 1/4 BEFORE opening the second quarter. This will reduce spills and overflows. Connect a food grade flexible poly tube to the spigot and place this tube in your jar. Surround the tube and cover the top of your jar with Saran wrap to prevent bees/flys getting in your honey (or use bucket with holes in the lid for your down tube). Looking in the back window does not give a complete picture of whether the frame is full and capped. This explains why your jar didn’t fill. When you are considering harvesting lift and inspect the flow frames the day prior to check if the frame is full and capped, partially capped, or not capped to your preference (or you can test brix if you wish). Thick and or candied honey is very problematic.
Well congrats on your first FlowHive extraction David. I’m surprised how fast it happened for you. Wow. Hard working bees. I would like to point out a few things to help educate. First off, there are built in levels in the hives-base, both on the side and the back. Second, the hive should have been angled backwards much more. I have a feeling some honey was lost due to this. **It’s important to note that if those two frames were indeed full, you would have extracted 64 oz! As with turning the Lkey inside each frame a third at a time—its reasoning is to wait 5 mins in between each third turn. This is because if this is your first extraction, which I believe it was, opening the entire frame as fast as you did, honey can spill out on the inside of the hive. This should not ever happen again as the frames become more worked. Besides that, job well done. I’m happy to see you have the flowhive a try.
Congratulations on your first Flow Hive Harvest! Some tips: You can use the Flow Key or a pair of pliers to carefully remove the 2 plugs. the lip on one end of the honey tube is designed to go into the leak back point on the bottom of the Flow frame while harvesting honey. We recommend only inserting the Flow Key only about 1/3 of the way in at a time, then after the honey flow starts to diminish, insert the key another third of the way in, and continue the same process until the key is all the way in to the back. Getting to much of a honey flow at once can cause the honey to possibly overflow into the pest management tray on the bottom. You can also make sure that the hive is tilted 3 degrees to the rear by using the built in level on the side of the hive bottom board. I just harvested 2 of my Flow hives in the last 2 days without any issues, and i typically get at least 2 quarts from each Flow Frame. It looked like the frames you harvested were full, i suspect that some of the honey may have overflowed, look into the pest management tray on the bottom. If you see much honey there, then I think you had an overflow due to opening to much of the frame to quickly. Again we recommend opening only a third at a time and allowing the honey flow to diminish before opening the frame another 1/3. I hope you noticed by the next morning after all the tiny air bubbles have risen to the top, how clear and beautiful your honey looks. Im sure you now realize how much work you saved not having to process, centrifuge and filtering of the honey you didn’t have to do, not to mention all the hard work you have to do just to take the honey off of the hive.
I think my bees have read the plans for the flow hive. Every time I harvest, they zoom round the back of the hive, and commit suicide in the jar of honey, unless I cover the tube and jar with cling wrap. They even fly into the space where you fit the handle to crack the comb. So, I always take the handle out straight away and put the top plug loosely back into it’s place while harvesting. It’s loads of fun though, and no effort at all.
I really like my flow hive. I’ve been keeping bees since 2001 or so and never spun a frame. I’ve done Ross Rounds, comb, Flow. I used a bunch of plastic sheeting in the beginning but am removing it as hives collapse etc. I do very little hive management and just let them do their thing. Most of my colonies are strong so I let them make whatever comb they want, worker or drone. Then when I want some honey I slap a Flow super on a strong colony.
here’s a tip for you, if you get more than one flow hive, use two keys when opening the frames as well as doing it gradually, i find it helps especially if the frames are a little stiff from use over time, i leave the keys in position when harvesting a frame and give them a good 30 secs in place when closing. they can leak a little honey beneath the hive on the very first harvest, but the girls will clean that up quickly. i have 5 flow hive +2, not sure why you’d use that spirit level when you have the flow hive +2 since there’s one built into the hive for the 3 degree tilt angle, it’s on the left side of the base of your hive.
We would love to have beehives on our property, but living on limited income, we’ve not been able to do so. Checked into these flowhives and about fell out looking @the prices. Since getting one of our lgr bills paid off, maybe we can save enough to get 1 Z THANK YOU for your service! Both my husband and I are vets.
I’m not a beekeeper, but the bees kinda assigned me to be one 😅, so I’m trying to learn as much as I could now. 😆🤪 I’m about to order one of those to give these bees a proper home. They’re in my kitchen vent right now, so just image the sound of sticky honey coming from the fan every time we use our overhead microwave. 😂 Killing them is not an option, (it will break my heart) so if you “can’t beat them, join them.” 😊😊😊
If you set up the level by holding it level above the roof of the hive, that will give you an idea how much you need to go, then if you know how many threads per inch, then you can just turn the screw, how many times, to equal how far you need to go. So, if you need to go, 1/4″, and you have 24 threads per inch, then just turn the screw 6 turns. Then check again. When that fails, just go back to the article above. 🤣🤣
I have a bee hive above my attic that has been present for years and I am very attached to my bees. I think I want to get the same Flow Bee Hive and move them to a rural property so they can continue to be my lovely bees! Thanks for the article! The comments are informative as well! Glad I stumbled across this! 🌻🐝🐝🍯
A good thing to demonstrate prior to harvesting was to pull frames out to show how much is fully capped. Looking at how much honey you harvested none of the frames were fully capped. The rear view harvest window is not an indicator that frames are ready only that the bees have filled the frames from the rear. A Flow frame holds around 1.5ltrs of honey so around 2.5 gallons US. Nice to see you having fun with the Flow Hive I’ve several and for around 5 years now. Great for backyard beekeepers although lifting a partially or full deep Flow super off the hive to carryout inspections isn’t easy. Demonstrating harvesting off the hive is also good as it’ll show the leakage you get back into the brood below so my advice is never harvest all frames in one go. Do several then a few more with a couple of days in-between. I’ve had colonies abscond due to the severity of the leakage from the Flow frames. The individual sections ultimately cannot prevent liquid leakage after cracking the frame open. If you have the pest management tray in you’ll see the leakage in the tray that’s dripped over the entire brood chamber. If you don’t have the tray in it’ll fall through the metal mesh floor and can encourage robbing from other nearby hives, wasps or hornets.
I’m kind of curious to see what your refractometer would be I’ve always been interested in these hives but the cost of them I can’t justify for me. We had a pretty early dearth this year so I had some frames that weren’t even fully capped I spun them hive frames out first and then went back and uncapped and then respond the frames the honey that was in the uncap frames I used to make mead as I figured the moisture content would be kind of high I unfortunately don’t have a refractometer but I’m looking to get one
I’m going to share something with you most people don’t know, look at your bees coming in are they short can you see their stripes? No okay so they’re how many stomachs aren’t full.. or you see them on the landing board an their Big Fat Bees, plates separated, definitive stripes, elongated- compared to when they’re short and Stumpy. These are ON HONEY FLOW, stomachs are FULL, their ON the flow..