Flow Hive Bee hive invention to let honey run out

I reckon stress more than anything because that's one hell of a backload of orders to make!

Best of luck to them and I hope they can pull it off.

My son has had beehives for about 7 years and is regularly extracting honey and other maintainance. The Flowhives will eliminate the extraction phase and to a degree the maintainance but they certainly won't be set and forget when it comes to disease and pests. There are a number of nasties that can kill off a hive or cause them to swarm - you lose your bees in either case. Her's a link to known nasties in Qld. https://www.daf.qld.gov.au/animal-industries/bees/diseases-and-pests

The only one I new of Ken in that list was the Hive beetle apart from that I had no idea there were that many other potential problems.

However, I have deliberately shied away from beekeeping for now as I know they are a lot of work and even with the flow honey extraction you still need to dedicate time to maintenance otherwise the hive will be history. This invention does make that one part (collecting honey) rather easy so credit given where it's due, but at the moment, I have too much on my hands for bees as easy as the Flow Hive sounds - even the 10 native bee hives I have on my property aren't mine

yeah that's my concern, if the general public that buy these hives because it's "cool" will actually take the time to learn about it, or they could do harm to the industry. I know the inventors have repeatedly told people that's not as simple as standing back and collecting honey but I think there'd be a lot of people that don't listen or fully understand the requirements.

It's like anything, you have to be committed and know what you are getting into in regards to certain projects like keeping animals, bees, gardening, etc. Impulse buying can be risky/costly if you're half baked!

I agree with what you were alluding to before about predicting a glut of secondhand Flow Hives for sale on eBay or Gumtree.

Being a hobbyist beekeeper in the 70's and again in the90's I find this incredible. I'm definitely going to look into this. I've shied away from honey bees since getting our land here. Mainly cost, hive loss and my back. Getting supers is hard work. I still have a gallon of my honey from years ago. It's aged like fine wine! I miss having the little bugs!

Ann said:

Being a hobbyist beekeeper in the 70's and again in the90's I find this incredible. I'm definitely going to look into this. I've shied away from honey bees since getting our land here. Mainly cost, hive loss and my back. Getting supers is hard work. I still have a gallon of my honey from years ago. It's aged like fine wine! I miss having the little bugs!

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Do you get hive beetles and mites etc in Texas - or are hive/bee pests not too bad of a problem?

Here's a different side of the topic...

http://www.milkwood.net/2015/02/26/going-flow-flow-hive-actually-good-idea/

Oh geez

It's a kind of dramatic article filled with a lot of long analogies about chickens and eggs, which quite frankly miss the mark and don't hold much of an argument - sorry to be critical of his work...

The fact is if we followed that way of thinking to the letter of the law then we should still be keeping bees in logs! Just because part of the frame is made of plastic and prebuilt so the bees don't have to make as much to form the cell doesn't make it unethical or a "toxic environment" for "poor" bees. No one is making the bees stay there or caging them like battery hens.

In reality, no one really knows how well the flow hive will work in the wider community and if it will actually work as the inventor says. We won't know until people start tying them and until then hypothesizing or assuming how this particular design won't work without trialing it yourself is little rich in my opinion.

All we can do is take the word of the inventor and their associates for now and on face value it's a pretty good story for bees and beekeepers (until or if we find out otherwise). If this invention means more bees worldwide then that's good for a species that has been under threat of decline for the past decade I reckon.

Good find Stevo - I did enjoy the read I should say.

hah, yeah I picked up on the chicken and egg points there Mark. I thought.. hang on that's not really right.

but anyways...

logs! hey... wouldn't it be awesome if we could get them all growing in natural logs. I reckon that'd be cool. I've been thinking about how to build some kind of log hive. It'd be possible, and I agree with their sentiment that natural is better, and I think we can aim for a better more natural environment.

What I took from the article was that the plastic/fake environment is less than best, which I would agree with.

stevo said:

What I took from the article was that the plastic/fake environment is less than best, which I would agree with.

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Probably a fair enough point.

I reckon they're betting 12 million dollars that plastic flow hives end up all good

Mark said:

I reckon they're betting 12 million dollars that plastic flow hives end up all good

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heh, no pressure though

I'm not sure if this has been covered, maybe I missed it or forgot it, but I wonder if big commercial operators can use it. Their current systems may be faster or more efficient.

stevo said:

I'm not sure if this has been covered, maybe I missed it or forgot it, but I wonder if big commercial operators can use it. Their current systems may be faster or more efficient.

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Yes of course! If it does work as advertised then a large honey company could save heaps of time and effort by draining all their hives with a twist of a tap... technically.

It would have to save costs in the long run...

Why should this just be aimed at the hobby bee market?

yeah just thinking out loud, i know it's probably aimed at all markets, i guess the bigger bee farmers would have to work out if they want to invest a bit of money in the new systems, and it'd be a Cost & Time vs Yield type thing, they might hold off til they see how it goes. I'm sure it's been covered somewhere if i googled it.

Probably right yes... It might no be worth the upgrade at all.

It's going to be an interesting thing to watch over the next few years.

A little bit of an update to the Flow Hive story. New Flow Hive owners are joining up to the local bee clubs to learn more.

ABC story here: http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2015/08/21/4297840.htm

Good update article. It's certainly intriguing and inspiring but I agree that the hype has probably gone too far and there are going to be excited buyers who will soon lose interest or not be bothered with the continued upkeep of the bees. I myself am just a little too time poor at the moment to be getting into it but admire the discipline and hope others in the area do keep some bees so that my own fruit trees will naturally bear some fruit.

It's timely really because honey bee keeping is actually getting harder and I'm hearing how some people are giving up keeping honey bees because of how hard it is becoming to simply keep the hives healthy and free from hive beetle and other pests.

Watch Australian Story this Monday night on ABC - 26/10/2015

Preview video here....

http://www.abc.net.au/austory/

Some nice bee shots in the promo - I need a camera that can take macro video like that!

Yes that will be very interesting to watch, I wonder if they will explain how they intend to honor all those orders in a timely fashion?