Plan B Forum

Developed during the last decade by Australian father-and-son beekeepers Stuart and Cedar Anderson, the Flow™ Hive does away with the conventional practice of harvesting honey with removable frames that are cut with hot knives and having honey extracted centrifugally with a machine. Using gravity instead to collect honey out of pre-formed, high quality BPA-free plastic combs that open and close, the Flow™ Hive is much less stressful for the bees, say the inventors:

The Flow frame consists of already partly formed honeycomb cells. The bees complete the comb with their wax, fill the cells with honey and cap the cells as usual. When you turn the tool, a bit like a tap, the cells split vertically inside the comb forming channels allowing the honey to flow down to a sealed trough at the base of the frame and out of the hive while the bees are practically undisturbed on the comb surface.

When the honey has finished draining you turn the tap again in the upper slot resets the comb into the original position and allows the bees to chew the wax capping away, and fill it with honey again.

The honey that comes out of the Flow™ Hive does not need to be filtered or processed (and tastes better), therefore significantly reducing the amount of work that usually goes into beekeeping -- and also significantly reducing the amount of disturbance that bee colonies usually go through in the process of extracting honey, which would no doubt mean healthier bees.

http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-p ... onies.html

Video/Kickstarter pitch:

Amazing invention. I hope they're a big success.

It would eliminate the need for multiple honey supers so you could add an extra brood box.

Thanks for the tip!


yrs,
rubato

This is so so cool. Wish I lived in a place where I could have bees - I'd definitely consider it!!

Simple and elegant; the mark of a good invention. If it works as described (and no unseen problems arise), it could well become the norm (from what I understand of beekeeping, which is pretty elementary). I wish the Andersons luck.

Meade--at first I was thinking, "don't we see enough of her without posting her photo" but then I got it. Good one.

simple and elegant, like the ACA.....

wait, that s not right....

I always find it heartening when I see that even in this world of ultra complexity, someone can still come up with a useful simple invention that no one ever came up with before...

They're looking for donations...frankly I'd rather be an investor...(though if this thing really works the way they say it does, I doubt that they're going to have any problem raising capital...)

I just checked their website; they wanted to raise $70,000...

They've raised over 3 million:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow ... ur-beehive

I hate to admit this, but it looks so safe and appealing, I'm actually seriously thinking about getting one...(It would also be very educational for the lad)

Of course if I do decide to do this, I will abide by all local permitting regulations; I won't be a scofflaw...

Lord Jim wrote:I hate to admit this, but it looks so safe and appealing, I'm actually seriously thinking about getting one...(It would also be very educational for the lad)

It would also open the door for you and rubato to share your common interest and honey recipes.

Can you feel the love?

Watch out; can the singing of Kumbaya be far behind?

All that we're saying, is give peace a chance....

Lord Jim wrote:All that we're saying, is give peace bees a chance....

FTFY.

Be fair, Sue - LJs channeling his inner Gob, runner-up in Australia's 1993 International Spelling Peace.

$3,000,000 startup* is hard to justify for a device with a limited market which is trying to displace a long-established technology which is much cheaper. I expect it will be successful but I don't know if it will pay back that kind of investment in a reasonable time frame. It will be immediately popular with hobbyists who have one or a small number of hives although all of us already have extractors or an arrangement with someone who does. The story that it is 'less stressful' for the bees is a bit of advertising hyperbole; first of all you are still going to have to open up the hive to check on the brood supers to ensure that you have a healthy queen who is laying eggs or to re-queen, secondly, opening up the hive is not that stressful for them most of the time anyway.

Also, you only get 1 very small box with only -3- frames in it with your donation/investment (at the moment). A small super has 8 frames and a full size one has 10. During the heaviest honey flow they fill up pretty quickly so 3 frames will have to be closely tended to keep some free space.

For commercial bee keepers I don't know. Most of their income is from pollination fees so I don't know how much they care about the honey. Potentially it could cut labor costs a lot but with a much higher capital cost. Also, theft of hives and equipment is already a problem so putting out more expensive mechanical supers might not pay. They would also need a modified delivery system to capture the honey in drums or carboys as opposed to small jars.

There is a final technical issue. Perhaps minor for a hobbyist. As honey is made by the bees it is gradually evaporated and concentrated so the density goes up and the viscosity increases. When a frame is fully capped it is as viscous as it is going to get (at that temperature). With their hive you can't see how much of the frame is capped so you can't know when it is 'done' (if that is what you want). And when it IS 'done' it will flow more slowly so you may be limited in collecting honey efficiently to warmer days.

I wish them all success. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

yrs,
rubato

* Yes, I know they're giving you something for it so the net is less, but still ...

It's a brilliant business start-up model...

In the old days, (like maybe 10 years ago) these guys would have had to pitch this to venture capital groups to raise the funds from investors who expected a percentage return on their money...

But by taking advantage of social media, they've been able to raise way more than the start up capital they need in "donations", without owing anyone a dime...

No lawyers, no contracts, no investors to be paid, no paperwork, no one with a legal right to look at the books, and no one who can claim they were swindled....

Pure genius...

You also get a free hanger system and a genuine picture of the Queen

Mite killer?
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/how-the-inte ... 66924.html

How the Internet of Things Could Save the Bees
It’s a concept that’s both simple and terrifying. For years, scientists have known that honeybees are disappearing at an alarming rate. Fewer honeybees means less pollination, which could lead to a rapid drop in food supplies. If the bee die-off continues, the entire human race will be threatened. We need bees.

Fortunately, researchers at the University of Minnesota may have come up with an Internet of Things device that could help prevent the bee-pocalypse.

One theory behind the massive bee collapse involves the Varroa destructor mite, a tiny, vampirelike parasite that lives inside honeybee colonies and literally sucks the life out of them, infecting them with a virus that contributes to colony collapse disorder.

In the left corner, the hardworking and industrious honeybee; in the right, the much smaller parasite, Varroa destructor mite. (Photos via Wikimedia, “Apis mellifera Tanzania” by Muhammad Mahdi Karim.)

The Eltopia MiteNot can wipe out the mites using a circuit board camouflaged to blend in with a traditional honeycomb frame made from cornstarch wax and other renewable materials. Beekeepers install one MiteNot frame inside the hive; the board’s embedded sensors detect temperature fluctuations and other environmental data, then transmit it via a 3G cellular connection to Eltopia’s cloud-based BeeSafe application.

Based on sensor data, BeeSafe can detect the optimal moment when female mites have laid their eggs, but before the male mites have fertilized them. It then sends a command back to the MiteNot frame to heat up just enough to sterilize the male mites without harming the bees.

When covered in wax, the frame with MiteNot installed becomes indistinguishable from any other part of the hive and can be reused as needed. Its great advantage is that it can fight the mites without the use of pesticides, which could also harm the bees.

The Eltopia MiteNot is still being tested, but it may be available as early as fall 2015. Hopefully we’ll all still bee around by then.

well, at least the hive will be healthy when the pesticides cause the colony collapse....