![]() ![]() The Andersons from NSW told Australian Story they coudn’t believe how popular the invention became when they launched it on the Kickstarter crowd-funding site, in order to get the product to other beekeepers and interested consumers. ![]() The honey drains out and into a jar on the outside, leaving the bees to continue their work. ![]() Once full and capped off, honey starts to flow out when a lever is turned outside the hive. The Flow Hive consists of a plastic frame with a honeycomb matrix on which bees work to fill up each cell with honey. Check out a video detailing the process, as well as more photos, below.A HUMBLE Australian beekeeper, who used crowd-funding to revolutionise the way the world extracts honey from bee hives, made a cool $16 million.Ĭedar Anderson and his father Stuart created the ‘Flow Hive’, which became a beekeepers’ dream. Join the discussion in the Flow Hive forum thread over at. Have you ever tried beekeeping? Let us know if you think the Flow Hive system might be something you’d be interested in using for your own drones and queen. Information about just what production systems they used along the way seems unavailable, though the pair has been quite open with most of their design process and inspirations, even doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) earlier this month. Once they had the design, 3D modeling helped them to render it just so, and then 3D printing brought the cells to life. That original goal, in fact, was reached in just 477 seconds–that’s not even a full eight minutes. That’s an incredible 17,433% over the original $70,000 goal. At its conclusion last week, the Anderson team raised a grand total of $12,203,195 (USD, despite being an Australian campaign), thanks to a whopping 36,526 backers. ![]() In fact, the Indiegogo campaign for the Flow Hive was fully funded within a matter of minutes and broke the record for the most fully funded international campaign more than a month before it concluded. The concept, while it may seem simple, is making a huge splash among beekeeping aficionados. The splits in the cells are also large enough to ensure bees cannot catch a leg or wing in it. Once the honey reaches the bottom of the frame, it pours out through a spout that is attached. The 5.8mm honeycomb cells are designed to each break apart at the turn of the handle, allowing the gathered honey to flow downward. The frames are created via 3D printing, using a BPA-free, food-grade plastic. The ingenious idea centers on the honeycomb structures. When the combs are full, harvesting–traditionally a laborious effort that disrupts the entire hive as the frames are removed, taken to other locations to clean and then purify the honey, and then returned to the hive, again disrupting the bees–is literally the matter of turning a handle. Below is a short video detailing this frame idea. The frame’s honeycomb structures are completed by the bees, which also cap them off with their wax as they produce honey. Then the entire design changed.”įlow Hive is a novel means of adding a man-made, plastic honeycomb starter frame into the beehive. “Dad just moved his hands in a particular way and in two seconds I understood exactly what he meant. “There was this one moment when we were well along the path with a particular patent,” Cedar said. About three years ago, Stuart came up with the idea that ultimately became Flow Hive. The Anderson family have been beekeepers for four generations (this family of Andersons no relation to yours truly!) and Cedar and Stuart came up with the idea to split the cells and frames several years ago. Their goals included increasing production, decreasing bother to the bees, and being able to mass produce the winning concept in order to maximize the benefits across the worldwide beekeeping community. A father-son team out of Australia, Stuart Anderson and his son Cedar Anderson, have been working for more than a decade to come up with a better way to harvest honey. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |