Get to Know
Family-Beekeeping
Getting Started
We wanted to connect our kids with nature, teamplay with the global community protecting the ecosystem and learn first hand about bee care and the setting up of a sustainable family project. Yet, we were held back by the enormous resouces conventional beekeeping - especially the honey harvesting - requires and our fixed family resources we would be able to allocate to the job.
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Once we learned about the new FLOW® Hive technology we knew immediately that this is it for us and got started right away.
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We sigend up for beekeeping course and joined a local beekeepers' club to connect with the regional community.
By delivering proof of concept, we quickly become integrated and respected as a member adding a new perspective to the traditional way of doing bee-things.
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It's a learning experience!
Bees
We made room for three bee colonies to move into our backyard. Two are placed in the northwestern part of our property right behind the ridge and within the our fruit orchard facing south. The other one is also behind the rigde facing south, yet loacted within the northeastern part of our family beekeeping. This way they are protected from strong summer winds as well as heavy fall/winter storms and surrounded by millions of blossoms in spring- and summertime.
The first colony moved into our place in April 2022. The second is a spin-off created a year later in 2023. The third is also a spin-off created just another year later (2024). We plan on creating another spin-off in 2025 to have two colonies at each location. This will help us to better care for our bees as we will be able to unite colonies in case one is weak and needs special protection to survive.
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Our bees are not obliged to earn their keep in real money. It's a fair tradeoff between us:
They care for us and we care for them!
Hives
We are keeping each of our bee colony in a FLOW® Hive. A FLOW® Hive is made out of wood and compatible with a Langstroth Deep (10 frames) beehive. Contraty to all other conventional beehives, irres-pective of their individual type, texture and size, the FLOW® Hive features a revamped honey-extraction mechanism in form of FLOW® Frames.
The newly invented FLOW® Frames comprise of an artificial split-cell foundation made out of BPA- and BPS-free food grade plastic on which the bees build their comb. Just like in any other hive, bees fill the honey cells and cap them off. By inserting and twisting the FLOW® Key the prefabricated cells are split open and the honey simply flows into the trough, through the tube and into the jar or the bucket.
Our FLOW® Hives enable us to harvest honey as a family straight from the hive without any stress or nuisance - neither for our bees nor for us. Even kids can do it. Except for the FLOW® Key, a tube and jar, no further equipment is needed. Neither needed is any special protection as the hive remains closed when the mechanism is activated and the bees are inside taking care of their own bee business.
It's easy and fun!
