FlowHive

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Charlie
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FlowHive

Unread post by Charlie »

From http://full-timewhistle.com/science-27/ ... -7413.html

"Now a new invention allows hive owners to collect fresh honey straight from a tap, much like pouring a beer, thanks to an internal decanter attached to the comb inside."

There is a video there that basically shows a tap at the bottom of the super with honey coming out. For starters I don't understand how you could build a contraption and get Bee's to fill it full of honey and if it did work I can imagine all kinds of limitations with it. I also find it interesting that no one talks about the maintenance of these newfangled gadgets. I will admit extracting honey and cleaning up the mess and a time-consuming pain however I can't imagine cleaning up crystallized honey in every Hive. While the idea is intriguing and I would love to see the design, I will keep a healthy dose of skepticism at hand

Charlie
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Vance G
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Vance G »

Can I put mine with the no swarm spacers that were advertised heavily in the seventies and the funny shaped hive tools and screened bottom boards etcetera. It may work and will be an interesting toy for a few but I just don't see it being available at a price that will tempt me to try it.
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Allen Dick »

What I find interesting is that this idea has gone viral and I see about ten references on my Facebook feed from all kinds of people.

These sorts of things are much easier to accomplish in advertising than in a real beehive and exploit people's natural gullibility, hopefulness and inability to foresee the difficulties.

I imagine that it must work well enough to put on a good demo if set up right, and fool most of the people some of the time while they are watching the demo, but I am sure it requires a lot of background support activity and manipulation that people do not understand until they actually own the device, and also have a negative effect on production and survival. Consider also what applying his system will do to hive organisation and the chances of wintering success.

My guess is that quite a few people will buy this, play with it and get some satisfaction, blame themselves for the shortcomings as they become obvious, then abandon it like many other gadgets that seemed like a good idea until tried, and never talk about it again.

What is so hard about pulling out a few frames, brushing off the bees and either extracting, crushing the cells with the back of a spoon or cutting chunk honey and returning the frames to the hive or putting them away for the season? On the scale that this contraption will be used -- one or two hives -- the effort involved in removing honey is pretty small.

I see no need for unproven, expensive, clunky equipment. In fact, the easiest way to get premium honey -- honey in the comb -- without extracting is to just give foundationless frames with starter strips.
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Charlie
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Charlie »

While we may never know who uttered the words "there's a sucker born every minute" I believe the quote may be very appropriate for this situation.

I did give them my email address to keep me informed and here is what they sent me so far.


Hi!
Thanks so much for your interest in the Flow hive. We (Cedar, Stu and our whole beekeeping family) are so excited to be letting you and the world know about the invention we have been working on for over a decade. The response has been quite overwhelming, thanks for all the amazing comments. We are working as fast as we can to complete a video that will show you all the details about the technology.
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 are putting some more videos on our Facebook page and website as quickly as we can.
We have been overwhelmed by the worldwide response, literally thousands of emails which we cannot possibly reply to, please bare with us through this exciting time!
ps, we have a FAQ and Gallery up on our website now.
All the best!
Stu and Cedar Anderson
Our website is http://www.honeyflow.com/
Our FB page http://www.facebook.com/flowhive
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Allen Dick »

We’ll send you a reminder when the Kickstarter crowd-funding time begins on February 23rd
Hmmm. Looks like they plan to be paid to fail. With Kickstarter all you need is a good story...
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Colino
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Colino »

Charlie wrote:While we may never know who uttered the words "there's a sucker born every minute" I believe the quote may be very appropriate for this situation.
It was said by David Hannum in respect to P.T. Barnums' fake giant. http://www.historybuff.com/library/refbarnum.html
Narcissism is easy because it's me or I, Empathy is hard because it's they or them.-Colino
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Allen Dick »

One other thing: do you see the intended market?

It is obviously people who know nothing about honey bees, but who want to buy bees and never open the hive.

We have enough of these already and I hear real beekeepers moaning about the problems such bee-havers cause.
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Charlie
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Charlie »

I can easily see where these frames could cost up to $20 per frame and myself with five hives I will not be spending $1000 for contraptions that will not stand the test of time. I cannot imagine any commercial beekeeper using this system. Obviously the target audience will be the beekeepers in cities or on small acreages and new people who do not wish to buy extractors. These fancy frames could/will result in some people never open their hives resulting in more disease and possibly more Africanized bees, small hive beetles, wax moths and who knows what else. While some people present this is the holy grail of beekeeping the truth is, the potential is there to do more harm than good. I fail to see how this will move beekeeping forward.

I do however have to admit I would love to get my hands on the system for an hour because I would love to see the engineering. I’m sure there is at least one absolutely clever idea in it.
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Colino
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Colino »

Bill covers it pretty good here.
http://youtu.be/AF-kkb9jG1A
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Charlie
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Charlie »

I just received an email that states:
"Finally, its here!
Flow™ hives and frames are now live on Indiegogo!
After the longest, busiest week in our lives, we can finally unveil the official place to purchase, pledge and support Flow™, at Indiegogo.
Jump online now to get the early bird pricing, click on the button below:"
When you go to the site https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow ... ur-beehive, one of the featured sidebars is listed below:
" $350USD
Full Flow EB Early Delivery Change
Flow frame Full kit to fit into a Langstroth 8 frame super. Delivered in time to catch your nectar season. Harvest up to 40lb (18kg) beautiful, fresh honey without effort. You won't stress yourself or your bees in the process. Add $50 to add one extra Flow frame to suit a 10 frame Langstroth. You can modify your own boxes or nominate a Perk for a Flow box below. Shipping paid separately, see the shipping charthttp://www.honeyflow.com/shipping/p/25
Estimated delivery: June 2015"
While I know some people consider honey to being liquid gold at the price of these contraptions, they must think honey is actual gold. They may have just priced themselves out of the market. At $350 US per box I believe that are well past the point of diminishing returns. At the prices they want I don't know why anybody would ever buy one. However I could never figure oh why anybody would buy a pet rock either.
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Charlie
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Charlie »

sorry "However I could never figure oh why anybody would buy a pet rock either." should read "However I could never figure out why anybody would buy a pet rock either. "
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Allen Dick »

What is the real revelation is this: $382,412USD RAISED OF $70,000 GOAL

Do you think that making and selling a working device was ever the real goal?
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Charlie
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Charlie »

Allen,
Clearly your point is valid. I'm the fool for believing that there is some good left in humanity and stupidity has has a limit unlike taxes. However I keep being proved wrong. :(
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Allen Dick »

Maybe I am being too cynical. These guys may not have started out to deceive people. The easiest person to fool is yourself and we have no end of beekeepers who convince themselves of whatever they wish to believe.

For example,the whole small cell thing is demonstrably based on Lusbys' wishful thinking that the reason for their final success at keeping bees alive after two miserable failures was not the arrival of AHB, but their prayers and persistence. That belief was infectious and I saw the whole thing happen in real time. I was fully exposed to it and did not catch the bug.

Besides, I can imagine that this contraption might sorta work some of the time in specific conditions.
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by dtompsett »

what the fu.....

$2.87 million raised so far????

The only smart idea so far here has been the crowdfunding campaign! Couple more weeks of fundraising, ship out a couple thousand units to satisfy the sales, single production run and sell all the stock to someone... and get the f'k outta dodge!
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Allen Dick »

I have been thinking about this and concluded that -- assuming the device can actually be manufactured -- it will work under certain very specific conditions.

From the drawings, It seems to me that the plastic castings will have to meet very close tolerances to work, and, given the warping and variation we still see in one-piece plastic frames, a product that has been in production for decades with continual refinements and tweaking to try to correct the problems, I have my doubts.

As for actually working in the field, the problem is the assumptions underlying the whole concept and the unanticipated collateral effects. Since there are so many confounding factors that may upset the assumptions on which successful operation are based, there are too many potential ways for it to fail to list -- or even imagine.

If anyone think this will mean that beekeeping becomes simple enough to do without knowledge of bees and their habits or without opening hives often, I expect the opposite will be the case. Trying to get this to work and dealing with it at the end of the season will require more effort, not less.

How well it will work after a year in a hive is another question.

Considering the above and knowing how the crowd funding has worked out, it looks like a well-conceived con to me, but a con that will never be proven to be so since it will almost work and some people will claim they made it work.

Look at Small Cell. SC is demonstrably a complete hoax but some people still fall for it and many defend their fantasy hotly.
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by karen »

Some on in my bee club bought some here is what she shared on the email list.

"I actually did buy 3 Flow frames on Kickstarter the other night. I will not get them until September (all the earlier delivery ones were already sold out), so I don't plan on installing them until spring 2016. It cost $180...not cheap...but I am in that early adopter group of humans. I was very pleased with the video they put up on Kickstarter, it answered my most pressing questions and objections. And I will definitely share whatever I find out from experience with everyone."

Imagine paying $180 for 3 frames!
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by Allen Dick »

What good would three frames be?
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by karen »

I have no idea why some one would want only 3 frames, though the price may curtail someone from fulling a super with them. It won't save them from having to extract because the box will also need traditional frames. I am having a hard time with the price, unreal. Some hobbyist are more than willing to spend money on their bees for any reason.
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Re: FlowHive

Unread post by karen »

This was on Bee-L

"Flow Hive" device was previously invented and patented in 1939 by Juan Bizarro (spanish), USA / Spain office; patent (nº US2223561A)

You can see plans and patent following this link http://www.freepatentsonline.com/2223561.pdf
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