In an inspiring story from Australia, a father and son duo has invented a game-changing solution to increase the global honeybee population – using an innovative hive.
The ingenious invention, known as the “Flow Hive”, allows humans to harvest honey without harming the bees or disturbing their hives.
Traditionally, beekeepers have to employ invasive techniques that often led to disturbing, crushing, or displacing bees during honey extraction.
In contrast, the Flow Hive mimics a natural bee habitat so well that bees cannot distinguish it from their own hives. As a result, the honey can effortlessly flow out of the hive without causing any harm to the bees.
Flow Hive co-founder Cedar Anderson shared that the idea sprung when his brother got stung on an extraction mission. Inspired by the incident, Anderson envisioned a method allowing honey to be harvested directly from the hive without requiring invasive procedures.
“Imagine if you could harvest honey directly out of the hive without opening the hive and disturbing the bees so that the honey would just come straight out of the box and into the jar with zero processing,” said Anderson.
Together with his father, Stuart, they spent ten years trying to develop a more human- and bee-friendly design. What they came up with made the harvesting process so non-invasive they did not even have to wear bee suits anymore.
The new bee hive quickly gained attention and support, becoming the most popular crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo in 2015, raising US$12 million.
Since then, over 51,000 Flow Hives have been distributed worldwide, and help increase the global honeybee population by nearly 10 per cent.
“We all have ideas, and we all see better ways,” Anderson concluded.
“Right here in this room and in your backyard, there are thousands of inventions waiting to happen. And our world needs backyard inventors to see those better ways, to be driven by optimism, passion and purpose, to change our world for the better.”
