Flow Hive

Schematic showing the way that the flow hive cells offset during honey collection, allowing honey to flow freely.

The Flow Hive is a specialized beehive designed to allow automatic mechanical honey extraction from the frames, without complicated honey extraction processes.^[1]

Design

The design of the frames is unique, using a partially formed honeycomb made with vertical gaps in the plastic honeycomb lattice. The bees fill in the vertical gaps with beeswax and fill the cells with honey. When the mechanism of the frames is activated, the vertical gaps are offset by one half of a cell, breaking the wax seal and allowing the honey to flow through the cells, down into a chamber at the bottom and out of the end into a collection vessel.^[2] The system is then reset and the bees remove the capping and reseal the cells, beginning the process again.^[2]

The design has some difficulties with crystallized honey, and queen excluders are essential to keep the queen from laying brood in the flow cells.^[3] The Flow Hive system also costs significantly more than traditional hives, limiting their commercial usefulness.^[3]

The design has since been copied by Chinese company Tapcomb.^[4] Co-inventor Cedar Anderson says this copy clearly infringes on their patents, which cover all designs that have split cells to drain honey.^[4]

Crowdfunding campaign

The Australian company that makes the hives was created via an Indiegogo campaign that broke several Indiegogo records, was the most successful Indiegogo campaign at the time of its completion and is currently the 15th highest funded crowdfunding project overall.^[5] The Flow Hive system was invented by Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart Anderson, and they launched the crowdfunding campaign in February 2015, hoping to raise $70,000. Instead, they raised over $12 million and received nearly 25,000 orders from over 130 countries.^[6]

Criticisms of the Design

There are several complaints against the design of the Flow Hive^[7][8]

• Use of plastic comb: Wax comb, secreted by the bees, helps to remove toxins from the honey that the bees collected. Plastic comb may inadvertently keep toxins in the honey and act as a barrier to the environment.
• Crystallization: Especially in cold environments, honey thickens and even often crystallizes, which means the Flow Hive may clog and require heating to remove the honey.
• Promotion as 'maintenance free': In the first advertisements for the Flow Hive, it was marketed as a way to remove honey "without disturbing the bees". Many experienced beekeepers took issue with this, as they said it promoted a lack of maintenance of hives. Bee hives require regular maintenance and observation to check for diseases and other problems that might arise. Cedar Anderson responded to the criticism, changing the way that the Flow Hive was marketed, and specifying that all that changes with the Flow Hive system is the process of harvesting of honey, and that the rest of the beekeeping process should remain the same. ^[9]

While some beekeepers have called the Flow Hive "a solution in search of a problem",^[9] others note that the Flow Hive simplifies the arduous practice of extracting honey, especially for small beekeepers without expensive extraction equipment.^[1]

References