Love to hear what Jedidiah thinks of this!
Some friends of mine have for the last few years been involved in development of a new kind of bee hive. I don't know the actual inventors, but I do know their brother, and also another local bee keeper who has been involved with trialling prototypes. I didn't actually know about their work, however. It's been under wraps until just last week. What has happened since then is staggering.
Here's the story. For the last ten years, a father/son team of inventors have been designing, testing and prototyping a bee hive in which the honey can be tapped straight from the hive; with no apparent stress to the bees; it's as easy as turning a tap and letting pure clean honey flow straight out from the hive.
Now they are ready to go into production; and let the invention go public. To do this, they needed funding. They figured $70,000 should be enough. So they launched a kickstarter, and produced a video to introduce the idea to people.
Then things got REALLY crazy. The video went viral. Bee keepers all over the world have been intrigued, and fascinated, and keen to jump on board. They raised their $70,000 in the first eight minutes. Within 30 minutes, they had raised half a million. The total is currently over $4,400,000. Cedar and Stuart Anderson, the inventors, were gobsmacked. Clearly they had underestimated the interest; but they are now gearing up to deal with the demand.
Not all response has been positive; though it seems to me that most criticism is either misplaced; or else are general criticisms that apply to any hive in which there's a "brood box" or "queen excluder". Perhaps Jed can tell us more about this? The biggest issue to my amateur eye is that it might make bee keeping look too easy, and lead to a rush of people who think this gets away from any need to interact closely with the hive or the bees -- just put the box in the backyard and tap honey when you want it. The inventors have tried to be clear this is not the case -- you still need to care for the bees and get into the hive from time to time for usual bee keeping tasks for keeping bees happy and healthy. The recommend anyone joining their local beekeeping society. This could perhaps have been said more prominently on the fund raising page; but it's certainly there.
One thing I can say for sure. The inventors were not in this for the money; they are passionate about bees and about sustainable lifestyles.
Rather than explain it in detail myself, here are the places to look. (Just google "flow hive" if you want to look yourself; it's all over the internet and has lots of popular print press coverage as well; the record breaking fundraiser makes it a widely interesting story for almost anyone!)
The video to explain it:
Some friends of mine have for the last few years been involved in development of a new kind of bee hive. I don't know the actual inventors, but I do know their brother, and also another local bee keeper who has been involved with trialling prototypes. I didn't actually know about their work, however. It's been under wraps until just last week. What has happened since then is staggering.
Here's the story. For the last ten years, a father/son team of inventors have been designing, testing and prototyping a bee hive in which the honey can be tapped straight from the hive; with no apparent stress to the bees; it's as easy as turning a tap and letting pure clean honey flow straight out from the hive.
Now they are ready to go into production; and let the invention go public. To do this, they needed funding. They figured $70,000 should be enough. So they launched a kickstarter, and produced a video to introduce the idea to people.
Then things got REALLY crazy. The video went viral. Bee keepers all over the world have been intrigued, and fascinated, and keen to jump on board. They raised their $70,000 in the first eight minutes. Within 30 minutes, they had raised half a million. The total is currently over $4,400,000. Cedar and Stuart Anderson, the inventors, were gobsmacked. Clearly they had underestimated the interest; but they are now gearing up to deal with the demand.
Not all response has been positive; though it seems to me that most criticism is either misplaced; or else are general criticisms that apply to any hive in which there's a "brood box" or "queen excluder". Perhaps Jed can tell us more about this? The biggest issue to my amateur eye is that it might make bee keeping look too easy, and lead to a rush of people who think this gets away from any need to interact closely with the hive or the bees -- just put the box in the backyard and tap honey when you want it. The inventors have tried to be clear this is not the case -- you still need to care for the bees and get into the hive from time to time for usual bee keeping tasks for keeping bees happy and healthy. The recommend anyone joining their local beekeeping society. This could perhaps have been said more prominently on the fund raising page; but it's certainly there.
One thing I can say for sure. The inventors were not in this for the money; they are passionate about bees and about sustainable lifestyles.
Rather than explain it in detail myself, here are the places to look. (Just google "flow hive" if you want to look yourself; it's all over the internet and has lots of popular print press coverage as well; the record breaking fundraiser makes it a widely interesting story for almost anyone!)
The video to explain it:
- The fundraiser page at indiegogo: Flow Hive: Honey on Tap Directly From Your Beehive
- The home page for the flow hive: www.honeyflow.com
- Article from the Newcastle Herald (my local paper): Big buzz for Flow Hive opportunity for honey on tap. (The picture shows the family I actually know, the brother/son of the inventors, who has been actively involved in testing and trialling this now for the some years. I also know a few people in the video.)
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