Central Oregon Beekeeping Association - FlowHive and wintering bees

Reply to: FlowHive and wintering bees

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<blockquote>Allen Engle wrote:

Marty,

Congratulations on a strong hive.

I'm not sure what your&nbsp;setup and plans are currently, so I'm assuming that you have an 8 frame hive body on the bottom, and a flowhive box on the top.&nbsp; What I'm not sure is whether you're wanting to harvest the honey from the flowhive box.&nbsp; If so, and you want to overwinter the colony, I'd recommend you remove the flow hive soon, and&nbsp;add a second hive body, or at a minimum a super for them to fill (probably take some feeding during Aug and Sept.&nbsp; My rule of thumb is a minimum of two hive bodies full of honey and bees to overwinter.&nbsp; Some folks do have success with less, however my feeling is more food is better and involves&nbsp;less extra feeding in winter and spring.&nbsp; If the flowhive box has a built in queen excluder, it won't work as overwintering food.&nbsp; The workers will move up into the box as the food in the lower box is depleted, leaving the queen to die in the lower box.&nbsp; It seems the reason it would have a built in queen excluder is that they are suggesting using it as a honey super instead of a hive body.

Good Luck,

Allen Engle
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