I kept beehives years ago and also tried Kenyan Top-Bar style beehives. The bees in those were the most productive and most gentle. Love to see those again and at this very moment I am itching to get at least 2 beehives and start beekeeping again.

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 was actually harder to manage them from the perspective of modern beekeeper. Manipulating bars-combs was sometimes really hard since bees built comb their way because you left them on their own with either just a strip of wax or wooden stick as a guide for them instead of the whole frame with foundation.

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 know very little about bee keeping, but I was just curious how you get the initial queen for all those hives. Maybe it's not as hard as I think...

Initially if you want to keep a beehive you have to get queen+bees. You can start either with a few frames of brood and bees and a new queen, package or the best option with a natural swarm.

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.

I might be pushing an already over-touted product, but the Flow Hive seems to simplify much of the harvesting. 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.

> I might be pushing an already over-touted product

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.

In regards to "factory honey": I've read a few blogs stating how the combs are pre-fabbed from plastic and something about hive scents and comb wall thickness being thrown off.. But I imagine that's something bees can adjust to.