Now the bees can finally be left in peace to make their sweetness.
Bees have had a rough go of it lately. Plagued by unexplained hive declines, their population has also suffered at the hands of pollution and excessive use of pesticides. While bees may have 99 problems, now a meddling beekeeper ain’t one. Flow™ Hive is an innovative new device that utilizes a spigot system and molded honeycomb frames to create a non-invasive honey harvesting system. Developed by father-and-son bee masters Stuart and Cedar Anderson, Flow™ Hive eliminates the need for traditional extraction processes in which frames are removed from beehives manually, then loaded into a machine that uses centrifugal force to extract the honey. As the Andersons explained to This is Colossal,
“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.”
Though Flow™ Hive doesn’t quite have the infrastructure to accommodate large-scale commercial operations, it’s perfect for urban or backyard beekeeping. And as we all know, when the bees aren’t happy, nobody’s happy.
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