People are talking about the whopping amount of money an innovative beehive has raised on Indiegogo. The beehive is actually a redesign of a once popularly crowdfunded beehive concept but now has gone through some redesigns.
"Flow" describes an invention that allows honey to be harvested directly from the hive with little disturbance to the bees. The Flow Frames are honey storage frames for use in a super box.
Flow Hive 2 is a beehive where you can harvest honey instantly and this time, with enhanced features. Flow Hive 2 garnered funds amounting to about $14 million at the time of this writing the figure on the Indiegogo crowdfunding page was $14,042,435.
Estimated delivery is July.
For those new to this beehive, you get to keep bees and you get to have honey on tap. The beehive is the invention of father-son team, Stuart and Cedar Anderson, in Australia. Their company is BeeInventive Pty Ltd.
With their Flow Hive, you can get your honey via a tap without needing to handle the bees. Through a clear end-frame view, you can see when the honey is ready without opening up the hive.
They positioned Flow Hive 2 on pre-order for $699, their earlybird price.
How it works: Jonathan Pearlman in The Telegraph provided some detail. The hive consists of "artificial honeycomb cells in which the bees leave honey before sealing the cells with wax. A lever then splits the wax and rotates the cells to create channels for the honey to flow out via a tap into a drum or jar below."
"The extraction process is so gentle, the bees barely notice at all," according to the company.
Over 50,000 Flow Hives have gone out around the world, and now the Anderson team are back with an update.
So what are the new details that went into Flow Hive 2?
They worked on brass fittings, laser-cut wood; extra observation windows to watch the bees at work; offering legs that can be adjusted for uneven ground; and a tray to trap pests.
Talking about the wood, they said they chose Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) in the hives for its stable grain structure, and since it is sustainably sourced in North America, which is "close to our major customer base, reducing transport mileage."
They also noted Western red cedar's built-in natural preservatives. These provide resistance to borers, termites, rot and fungus growth.
Their adjustable leg feature enables you to control the height and level of your hive, which is handy for uneven ground. "The ability to precisely adjust the height of the hive on each individual corner makes just about any terrain suitable for a Flow Hive."
The makers also said that, on the updated version, they made "adjustments in the cell depth of the moving comb blade, so the movement that forms channels through the comb happens deeper beneath the bees feet for minimal disturbance, this also allows the bees to draw out their comb further."
More information: www.honeyflow.com/
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