Lowering the hurdle into Honey Bees - Kickstarter coming soon

[610Alpha]

Current and former beekeepers please watch and give us your thoughts.

I am not sure how many of you actually look at kickstarters. There is a new one coming soon and I think this one has a huge potential for lowering the hurdle for new bee keepers.

Granted in bear country this might save your hive, I am not sure. I don't know how it all works but I am sure we will hear more. This has certainly peeked my interest.

http://www.honeyflow.com/

[610Alpha]

More info:


Thanks so much for your interest in the Flow hive. We want to tell you a little more about the Flow frames/hives, how they work, what we think this will mean for beekeeping and where we are at with producing them.

How do the Flow™ frames work?

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 which resets the comb into the original position and allows the bees to chew the wax capping away, and fill it with honey again. The Flow frames are inserted into standard bee supers (boxes) in much the same way as standard frames, however the box itself is modified by cutting two access doorways in one end.


When the frames are inserted, the ends of the frames now form the end of the super. This allows access to the operating slots and honey pipe outlets.


You can see into the hive


Each Flow frame is designed with a unique transparent end allowing you to see into the hive. This means you can watch the bees turning nectar into honey and see when each comb is full and ready. Both children and adults get excited seeing the girls at work in their hive. Importantly you will be able to keep an eye on colony numbers thus giving you early detection of any problems within your hive.


Please note: it’s important to check the hive for disease and look after your colony as per usual. This does require keeping an eye on your bees and opening the hive and inspecting the brood if there are signs of pests or disease. Beekeepers usually check their brood once or twice a year. If you are new to beekeeping you will need to seek help from experienced beekeepers.


It’s a fantastic learning curve.


The extraction process is not only easier but much faster with a flow hive


The whole harvesting process ranges from 20 minutes to two hours depending on the viscosity of the honey.


Usually the bees don’t even discover you at the back of the hive. If you notice that the bees have discovered the collecting jar or bucket you can always cover the extracting pipes or make a lid with a hole for the pipe/s.


There is no more heavy lifting


The harvesting happens right at the hive without moving the super boxes at all. No more injured backs!


Undisturbed bees makes a happier, healthier hive


Because the hives are not regularly opened and pulled apart to be harvested, the bees are relatively undisturbed and they experience less overall stress. Although this may seem trivial, bee stress is a significant factor contributing to the strength of a bee colony.


Opening a hive also risks potential introduction of pests and disease. It’s nice not to squash bees in the process of honey harvesting.


The risk of stings is lower


Because the bees are going about their normal business while you are harvesting the honey from the back of the hive. We have found that the bees usually don’t even notice that you are there.


We still recommend you use a bee suit or veil if you are inexperienced, don’t know the particular hive or have a grumpy hive. A hive that is usually calm can be grumpy at times when the nectar flow is very slow.

Where to from here?

After many years of prototypes we now have a robust design that we have been testing for the last 3 years with beekeepers here in Australia as well as in America and Canada.

Now we want to share it with you.


The official launch of the Flow hive is on the 23rd of February


We are launching on the popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter.com.


Through our launch we hope to raise the funds to get this project off the ground and start producing and delivering these hives to you within the next four months.


Apparently, if a lot of people pledge early, then the whole thing snowballs. Conversely, if the pledging goes slowly then the project is less likely to fly. In our case we hope many people who want a Flow super to add to their beehive or who want a whole Flow beehive (the bees have to be obtained locally) will pledge on the 23rd or 24th giving us a chance to reach our target and start production.


The early pledges get an additional ‘early bird’ discount off the already discounted price giving an extra incentive to pledge quickly.


We’ll send you a reminder when the Kickstarter crowd-funding time begins on February 23rd, and we will be putting some more videos on our website soon.


We are also making a FAQ page on our website to answer all the great questions that are flooding in.


All the best!

Our website is http://www.honeyflow.com/

[tech]

Kind of reminds me of the old "ant farms" - great for kids to play with, not so good for the ants.

The windows in the sides of the supers will allow the wax and honey to discolor. Greenhouse effect also may come into play - not good in warmer climes.

Disturb a hive enough and the bees may decide to move. They can be funny like that. Additionally, a beekeeper needs to look into the hive. Not just the outer edge, but throughout. They are a living community, and can have issues. It would be extremely easy to starve a stressed hive.

If I were to get back in to beekeeping, this is not the way I'd choose. Just my $0.02 ;)

[eeyore]

I would be interested in the cost of the system when I looked at the site, that information was lacking, which most of the time is not a good sign.

[610Alpha]

@eeyore - They were going to do a kickstarter (I mentioned kickstarter in the op and pricing was never on their main page) but had issues with USD and Australian Currency stuff so they went with Indiegogo. I signed up for email notification, you can get more info sometimes that way, and here is what it said:

Why the change?
We really like Kickstarter. We’ve been following them for a long time and our dream has always been to launch on Kickstarter.

The only problem is the US dollar issue. They won’t allow us to use US dollars, as we are in Australia.

If we had anticipated the response we would get from the US, we may have set up a US company so we could use USD on Kickstarter. Now, the only way we can offer Flow™ in USD is to swap to Indiegogo.

USD is required to manufacture on this scale, and the obvious choice is to manufacture in the US, as the boxes are expensive to ship overseas.

We will still continue with our small manufacturing setup in Australia for those that want Flow™ earlier.

Indiegogo reached out to us and showed they could support our revolutionary invention, by throwing everything they have behind us, to achieve our funding goals.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-beehive

They had a goal of $70K to start production in the US, they still have 39 days before the funding period is done and they already have $3.1 MILLION dollars in funding, 4,571% funded. WOW

Go to that link and get all the various support levels and what all comes with them.

[610Alpha]

Kind of reminds me of the old "ant farms" - great for kids to play with, not so good for the ants.

The windows in the sides of the supers will allow the wax and honey to discolor. Greenhouse effect also may come into play - not good in warmer climes.

Disturb a hive enough and the bees may decide to move. They can be funny like that. Additionally, a beekeeper needs to look into the hive. Not just the outer edge, but throughout. They are a living community, and can have issues. It would be extremely easy to starve a stressed hive.

If I were to get back in to beekeeping, this is not the way I'd choose. Just my $0.02 ;)

In my more info post I copied and pasted information that came to me from them via email:

Please note: it’s important to check the hive for disease and look after your colony as per usual. This does require keeping an eye on your bees and opening the hive and inspecting the brood if there are signs of pests or disease. Beekeepers usually check their brood once or twice a year. If you are new to beekeeping you will need to seek help from experienced beekeepers.

As far as discoloration, it doesn't appear to be an issue from what I have seen. I do believe they listed bee keepers in the US that have tested this so you could try reaching out to them to get your answers.

I don't think that the intention of this invention is to constantly mess with the bees, it allows you to see a portion of the hive as well as harvest the honey with minimal disturbance.

One of the pictures on the indiegogo site shows the wood that was cut being put back in place and in some of the pics you can make out wooden tabs that rotate to hold the piece in place.

You might want to take a closer look and ask them about your questions as I am not a bee keeper, I thought it was a cool invention and knew that we had some bee keepers on the forum and wanted to share.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-beehive

HARVESTING YOUR HONEY USED TO BE A REAL LABOUR OF LOVE

• First you had to protect yourself from stings
• Fire up a smoker to sedate the bees
• Crack the hive open
• Lift heavy boxes
• Pull out the frames, trying not to squash bees
• Brush the bees off the combs, or use a leaf blower!
• Transport the frames to a processing shed
• Cut the wax capping off each frame with a heated knife or automatic uncapping machine
• Put them in an extractor to spin out the honey
• Filter out all the wax and dead bees
• Clean up all the mess

And if that’s not enough hard work, the frames have to go back to the hives again....

A low tech solution that is a real time saver it sounds like to me but hey I have never harvested honey before so...

[610Alpha]

This Project has now gone well over 100x its goal amount of $70K.....$7.4 Million dollars in funds raised. $7,457,474 to be exact at this time, Funders 19,316. That's an average of $386/funder.

Who needs banks...crowdfunding is a very powerful tool.

[610Alpha]

I am amazed at this project. They raised $12.2 Million by 36,530 people. That's an average of $334/person. I hope that they are able to deliver.