Paul, I got caught up in the rapture of the Flow hive last year. I decided that beekeeping was going to be awesome if it was so easy! Ha! I read books, did a webinar, read website materials and was still wildly unprepared for the amount of work of keeping bees. Varroa management, feeding, inspections, more varroa management - it has been a wicked learning curve.
That said, I managed to get a small honey crop and the Flow was fine. It performed as advertised. I had no issues with the quality of the kit. It also got me into beekeeping, and I'm totally hooked. 
There is one issue not advertised by Flow. When the comb is 'cracked' and later closed, there will be a fair few bees trapped/crushed when the frames are reconfigured. I assume they rush in to eat honey from their ruptured honey stores.
I guess there are bee losses in conventional harvesting too.
I'm now running 2 conventional hives as well, so will have better comparison next year.
Brian

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