Move over drones and Oculus Rift. There’s a new technology disrupting … the beekeeping industry. Flow Hive, with its patented beehive design, has raised $2M on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo since its campaign launched less than 24 hours ago. Already this eclipsed its goal of $70K, and placed it at #11 of the most funded campaigns on Indiegogo to date.
Flow Hive is a new beehive design that its inventors claim is easier on both beekeepers and bees. Designed by a father and son duo out of Australia, Stuart and Cedar Anderson, the new technology purports to allow beekeepers to harvest honey without opening the hive, and it sends a stream of honey out of a tap that’s pure, unprocessed, untouched.
Prior to this, beekeepers would suit up, crack a hive open, pull out frames (trying not to disturb bees), transport frames to a processing shed, cut the wax capping off each frame, put the frames in an extractor to spin out the honey, and then filter out wax and bees from the honey. And then put frames back into the hive.
Flow Hive claims to save a staggering 95% of the harvesting labor cost for honey. It took the Andersons a decade to develop this simpler design. They have been field testing the technology for the past three years with both amateur and commercial beekeepers.
Now, as it’s released to a broad audience through Indiegogo, the crowd is showing their support. So far, 5,357 people have contributed to the campaign at an average $375, and 41 days remain in the campaign. All this interest is great for the Australian beekeepers. Their mission is to encourage more people to pursue careers or hobbies in beekeeping, and it certainly looks like they’ll succeed.
