Can you elaborate? I am very curious!
I've got a friend in Florida who wants a hive, but apparently there is a year's long waiting list to get a permit. Considering the colony collapse issue here in the US and the fact that there is a lot of commercial farming in Florida, you'd think they'd want as many people as possible keeping bees.
The problem in Florida are Africanized honeybees. You need to be properly taught how to handle the fact that your hive may need to be managed and requeened if it shows signs of Africanization. That's something we don't have to deal with up here in the frozen north, thankfully.
As for the Flow hive, honeybees aren't easy. They're not something you can tap and harvest from. Our interference on so many levels is what has brought them to the position they're in now. Remember, they are livestock. We brought them here. For many, many years they were good here - however, someone introduced the varroa mite back in the mid 80's and it's been all downhill since then. It's a lot to go into here, but basically the mite vectors virii throughout the hive, and the bees, having now compromised immune systems (due to our industrial food system's use of agricultural chemicals) they can't withstand the virii and they die.
It's interesting to note that hobby beekeepers in urban areas have fewer problems with their hives than those who live in more rural agricultural areas.
Back to the Flow Hive - here's
an interesting link that discusses quite well my thoughts on the matter. It's a worthy read.
We have hives in three locations, two here in southeastern MA and one up in Maine. We've been keeping bees for about 12 years now. It's always been a management learning curve, but now it's pretty tough. It used to be you put bees in your yard, let them be for the most part, harvest the honey in the fall (leaving enough for them) and life went on. Not anymore. I see people jumping on this bandwagon, never properly learning how to manage their bees, spending way too much money on fancy gadgetry, getting some honey and the bees succumbing over the winter (which is fairly common now) and then they're scratching their heads wondering why.....
