Did you find these easier to manage than other types of hives?
It looks like it might be harder to get access to the honeycomb.
Also, is it easy to get queens for all those hives?
It looks like it might be harder to get access to the honeycomb.
Also, is it easy to get queens for all those hives?
Once you sorted that out though the combs were perfect and easy to manage. Sometimes you get lucky and they "listen" you from the beginning though.
Honeycomb is something else. You have to make sure that you kind of separate brood and honey and that again takes management. I just left them to their own and just took a comb or two of honey at the end each year. The last few combs were always 100% honey. I also let them swarm multiple times per year (had smaller Kenyan hive - 15 bars ) so I had practically no issues with Varroa in these.
I populated them with my own swarms or packages. Or are you asking about rearing queens?
I personally recommend natural swarm for a first hive. You get to start clean and from scratch. Bees from natural swarm are eager to start building their new home and are usually much quicker to establish a colony than bees from frames with brood or package.
Yes.
> the Flow Hive seems to simplify much of the harvesting
Probably true if you have just a few hives.
> I understand some purists are against the notion of "factory honey" but I imagine these style of hives will dominate the market in years to come.
Never heard "factory honey" as an argument against the flow hive. There's lots of bad arguments out there against the flow hive, but there's one really good one: it's super-expensive. I'm still waiting on more real-world info to judge, but I'm pretty skeptical that the mechanism can hold up after multiple seasons of bee-abuse.