“(Our aim) has always been to make things less stressful for the bees and easier on the beekeeper. Now things are on a much bigger scale.”
Stuart Anderson and his son, Cedar, have accomplished an almost impossible feat – they have created the most successful crowd-funding venture ever launched outside the U.S., raising over $7 MILLION in just about 4 weeks, all in support of their Flow Hive.
What is the Flow Hive, exactly? Essentially, the father/son team has created a beehive that minimizes a great deal of the labor normally involved in honey extraction. With just a turn of a lever, the honeycomb cells located within the brood box — the part of the hive where the queen bee lays her eggs and creates a nest — open and the honey runs to a pipe at the hive’s back, directly into a drum jar, ready for collection in as little as an hour.
Stuart (left) and Cedar Anderson (right) , inventors of the Flow Hive, hold a Flow Frame in the shed where they developed the idea in Far North Coast New South Wales, Australia.
“We hope it will attract young people and those in urban and suburban areas to take up beekeeping and, in turn, increase the bee population around the world,” said Stuart.
Based in the far northeastern corner of New South Wales, Australia, the pair has been working to identify a simpler method of honey extraction for a decade. They have been keeping bees for three generations… Cedar has been at it since he was just six years old.
“We humans are an inseparable part of a fragile web of species. We can’t survive without the health of the bees and indeed the world-wide ecosystem,” Stuart said. “We need more bees – and people that understand our interconnectedness. Beekeepers know that the health of their colonies is dependent on a multitude of factors, including what is happening for miles around each hive.”
Adds Cedar, “It shows just how much love there is for bees out there, which is really gratifying, ‘cos we love them, too. That’s really what the Flow Hive is all about.”
+ Go here for more information on the Anderson’s incredible invention. And for more information on beekeeping, locate your local apiary and talk to someone in the know!
Check out more posts celebrating #FPEarthMonth and learn why we all need to work to save the honeybees!
Please Free People don’t share Bee Hive as a wonderful creation, it’s a labor intensive plastic machine made to explore bees. Bees deserve better.
http://www.milkwood.net/2015/02/26/going-flow-flow-hive-actually-good-idea/
This is lovely! More people should keep bees, it is a very awarding experience to work with these amazing little creatures.
If it gives bees a safe place, free of pesticides and all of those chemicals, I’m all for it. Anything to keep these beautiful creatures alive.
Xx
Lovemeheartyou.blogspot.com
What a wonderful hive creation! It’s healthy, eco-friendly and sustainable!
I agree with Fabricia. I love bees and honey but this a not bee friendly method, they break bees structures to spill the honey and also the honey generated in plastic instead of the natural wax that bees produce is not tested yet, it can cause health problems because nature is holistic in its creative process, this reminds me of feeding cows with meat flour, people can expect a bad reaction since it’s not what happens in Nature. This may have started as a good idea and intention but it’s not natural, eco-friendly at all :(
Yikes, this does not sound like a good thing for the bees. Speaking from a consumer standpoint- sometimes the slow process IS what makes something great, and good for ALL organisms. From an environmental standpoint, how can you not see the direct correlation between denying bees natural drive to build a hive all the while getting “insta honey” and farm raising animals to produce high quantities of meat/milk/eggs? Not to mention the well-documented health benefits of the comb itself? We’re not meant to have buckets of honey at the turn of a key, that’s not how Nature works. I think more research is necessary when sending information out to the masses, please!
This really makes me sad! Does an animated gif, good looking people and a straw hat make it beautiful and eco-friendly? NO. This is hideous! The same as giving hormones to a chicken to make her lay more eggs, the same as hitting a pig so that he will be stressed and eat more and have more meat in less amount of time. Really Free People? This is what you have to share on your dedicated to Earth month? You can do better ( I hope!!!)
The enslavement of bees is so unnatural and NOT VEGAN AT ALL. There is a product called BEE FREE HONEE. Its delicious and its made from apples. Leave bees to alone in their natural environment.
Some decades ago it was inventend TDT, they had such good reasons as stated above in the article…more food, beautiful plantations, food for the people, etc…Stop messing with animals and Nature!
Actually I just read an article today explaining why it’s not the best thing for bees if everybody starts to have beehives. Because products like this let unconscious people own a beehive and just having bees it’s not the resolution of the problem. Sometimes bees don’t have resources, start planting your native plants and flowers.
Don’t put a beehive in a high rooftop, that’s too exausting for the bees.
Don’t try to manage a beehive if you know there isn’t enough food for them around, you can end with endless hungry bad quality life bees in a place (yours and other people). Don’t use honey like air, like something that you can dispose all the time. Make it special.
What – so all of those opposing this un-intrusive invention are cool with bee keepers regularly breaking down the beehive walls, destroying their environment and smoking (HARMING!!!) the animals instead of letting them carry about their natural production in peace?
@ALL-FOR-IT If you read carefully their website, they still promote smoking the beehive (for cleaning and such) they actually call it “beehive smoking a work of love”. I don’t believe this is a creation made to spare bees from stress, actually the opposite. And that smoking although NOT ideal at all happens at the pace of Nature, this gadget allows bee keepers to “play” with bee’s work: honey. Just because you don’t open the beehive it doesn’t make it un-intrusive at all. It seems more intrusive to me. Also this for me sounds like if you plastify a chicken’s womb so that she lays an already clean egg. Bee’s wax comb are an organic creation, their womb. Even just in name of health I wouldn’t like to eat this honey (it actually now scares me that I can now buy honey produced this way without knowing!). Among beekepers one of the most cruel thing you can do to a beehive it’s to deprive them from food, you should take part of the honey but leave some for them to feed themselves through winter (this is why they make honey in the first place). This invention makes the opposite. Imagine you are stocking up for winter and you keep finding your pantry empty everyday, or imagine you stocked up everything thing stays the same for a long time and one day there are a part that’s gone but you know you still have more than plenty to eat.
Also, human have proved that they don’t know everything about Nature and its intricated complex process. People now know that bees are responsible for the entire world biological system. But what happens to polen and wax from the honeycomb that create in regular beehives in this invention? Can’t you see that you’re telling bees to work in a way against they nature? How does this affects polinization? Etc, etc.
If this is such a good invention they should at least test it out for 20 years, before mass-produce it.
(Sorry for the long text!)
This is such a smart and innovative invention. Not sure how people can group this in with chicken hormones or meat flour. Nonetheless, kudos Stuart and Cedar!