Every industry has its innovators who are not satisfied with standard solutions. They are looking for new approaches and implementing innovative solutions. Such innovators in beekeeping are a father and son named Anderson from Australia. For ten years these people have been thinking about how to change the structure of the hives in order to disturb the bees less. And just recently, they presented to the world their revolutionary development - a beehive with flowing honey. What is it and how does this miracle work? Let's try to take a closer look at the new idea.

Why is this necessary?

Cedar and Stuart Anderson have been beekeepers for many years. The men were very concerned that the process of pumping out honey was accompanied by complex and painful actions. The most experienced beekeeper rarely manages to pump out honey without a single bite from his charges. After all, even after inhaling smoke, bees try to protect their reserves and give their lives by biting the beekeeper-invader.

A new hive with leaking honey completely solves this problem. Bees no longer worry about invasion of their territory, and beekeepers no longer rub sting sites. To pump out honey, you no longer need to perform additional manipulations with the hives or purchase expensive units. The design with automatic pumping of honey from the honeycomb allows you to obtain a sweet product with one movement of the lever (club). And you don’t have to open the hive at all.

In addition to saving on units for pumping product out of honeycombs, you can save on overalls and face nets. The rotating mechanism that opens the plastic frame is inserted in such a way that the person is standing at the back wall of the hive. The bees are concentrated at the entrance, they are busy with their own business, and do not notice the beekeeper. Although, particularly impressionable people and novice beekeepers may not refuse to use a face mesh. This will make you feel more confident and preserve your nerve cells.

The invention is based on the innovative structure of plastic honeycombs

Minimal impact on the beekeeping product and limiting its contact with oxygen has a positive effect on the quality and aroma of honey. In fact, the resulting honey retains the smell and taste that previously could only be felt by chewing it in the comb.

How does this happen

The invention of Australian beekeepers is called Flow. It is based on the innovative structure of plastic honeycombs into which bees carry honey. The honeycombs within the frames are partially formed, and insects do not waste extra time on this work. All the bee needs to do is fill the cell and seal it with wax. When all the cells are filled and sealed, then under the influence of a lever, the honeycombs change shape, creating inclined grooves for draining honey directly into the placed jars.

The Flow plastic frame consists of two rows of honeycombs. The hive, depending on its size, can accommodate from three to 7 such frames. For the convenience of the beekeeper, windows made of transparent plexiglass are installed opposite the plastic frames. As soon as the owner sees that the bees have sealed the frame with honey, he can activate the drainage mechanism. The double-sided honeycomb frame opens in the middle and the honey flows down into the placed jar. Bees do not show aggression or anxiety, since there is no mechanical impact on them. But as soon as the industrious insects notice that the honeycombs are empty, they unseal them and refill them.

In addition to the fact that the insects are not treated with a smoker and are not stressed, they save time on wax production, since part of it is reused to seal the next portion of the product.

Under the influence of a lever, the honeycomb changes shape

According to Australian developers, you can get 3 kg of honey from each frame. But due to the fact that it is easier to monitor the filling of the frames than in conventional designs, during the main honey collection you can quickly make room for the next portion of the product. This allows you to get good pumping rates.

Market promotion

Australian innovators solved the problem of promoting their invention in a very original way. They posted the video on a crowdsourcing site. This is a special resource aimed at attracting a wide range of stakeholders to solve any innovative problems. The information was posted on February 22, 2013, and after 4 days the innovators had $2 million in their account. This enabled Australian inventors to continue their work and begin producing hives for sale.

Today, unique hives are supplied in several configurations:

• A set of several plastic Flow frames (from 3 to 7 pieces), a certain number of tubes for draining honey, the required diameter, one rotary plug made of stainless material, for opening the internal partitions of the honeycombs.
• A set similar to the first one, but equipped with a standard box for frames.

Depending on the configuration, hives have different prices. But they do not include bees, since each beekeeper chooses a breed suitable for his area.

From the field of science fiction

Innovators from Australia did not stop at the achieved results. They set out to make the process of collecting honey as easy as possible and make it remote. One suggestion is to install the hives on the roof, and extend the pumping tubes directly into the room or kitchen. The video surveillance system allows you to assess the degree of readiness of the honeycombs (if they are not completely filled and sealed, the product may ferment), and then, by pressing a button, the honey flows into a container standing right on the kitchen table. But this fantastic option is under development.

To some, such a design will actually seem fantastic, but many inventions used to seem impossible and unrealistic, but today they are everyday things. Well, who can you surprise with a car or a plane today? Over time, this hive may become widespread and make the life of beekeepers easier.

Lettuce, as the earliest and most unpretentious green crop, has always been held in high esteem by gardeners. Most gardeners usually start spring planting by sowing lettuce, parsley and radishes. Recently, the desire for healthy eating and a large selection of greens in supermarkets have forced gardeners to think about which of these plants can be grown in their beds? In this article we will talk about nine of the most interesting, in our opinion, varieties of salad.

Despite the fact that calendar spring begins in March, you can truly feel the awakening of nature only with the appearance of flowering plants in the garden. Nothing signals the arrival of spring as eloquently as clearings of blooming primroses. Their appearance is always a small celebration, because winter has receded and a new gardening season awaits us. But, besides spring primroses, there is still something to see and admire in the garden in the month of April.

Carrots come in different colors: orange, white, yellow, purple. Orange carrots are dominated by beta-carotene and lycopene, the yellow color is due to the presence of xanthophylls (lutein); White carrots have a lot of fiber, and purple ones contain anthocyanin, beta and alpha carotenes. But, as a rule, gardeners choose carrot varieties for sowing not by the color of the fruit, but by the timing of their ripening. We will tell you about the best early, middle and late varieties in this article.

We recommend a fairly easy pie recipe with a delicious chicken and potato filling. An open pie with chicken and potatoes is an excellent hearty dish that is suitable for a hearty snack; it is very convenient to take a couple of pieces of this pastry on the road. The pie is baked in the oven for one hour at 180 degrees. After this, we lay it out on a wooden surface, having first released it from the mold. It is enough to slightly cool the baked goods and you can start tasting.

The long-awaited spring for many indoor plants is the period of the start of active growing season, and for most - the return of their decorative properties. While admiring the young leaves and emerging shoots, you should not forget that spring is also a great stress for all indoor plants. Sensitive to changes in conditions and universal, all indoor crops face much brighter lighting, changes in air humidity and temperature conditions.

You can easily prepare homemade Easter cake with cottage cheese and candied fruits, even without any pastry experience. You can bake Easter cake not only in a special form or in a paper mold. For your first culinary experiences (and more), I advise you to take a small cast-iron frying pan. Easter cake in a frying pan will not turn out as high as in a narrow pan, but it never burns and is always well baked inside! Cottage cheese dough made with yeast turns out airy and aromatic.

It is also interesting because its fruits (pumpkins) are used for food by young, not ripe ones (greens). This means that you don’t have to wait for the harvest to ripen, and from late spring to autumn you can have fresh vegetables on your menu. In your garden beds, it is better to grow varieties and hybrids of zucchini that are resistant to diseases and changes in weather conditions. This eliminates unwanted treatments and allows you to get a harvest in any weather. It is these varieties of zucchini that will be discussed in this article.

In the middle zone, April is the time when the first flowering of plants in gardens and parks begins. The constant soloists of the spring that has come into its own are the bulbous primroses. But even among the ornamental shrubs you can find those that will delight you with fragrant flowers that enliven the still inconspicuous garden. The main riot of beautifully flowering ornamental shrubs occurs in the month of May, and most of them, as a rule, bloom in mid-May.

Salad “Uzbekistan” with green radish, boiled meat and eggs is a classic dish of Uzbek cuisine, known to many since the times of the USSR. In any Uzbek restaurant you could order this simple but very tasty salad with meat and radish as an appetizer. If you have never cooked this dish before, I advise you to try it - you will like it and fall into the category of favorites! You can diversify the taste a little and add finely chopped cilantro, parsley and a pod of red chili pepper.

We are offered such a huge number of different preparations that, at times, even an experienced summer resident can get confused about choosing one or another fertilizer. In this article, we invite the reader to get acquainted with OMU - a complex granular organomineral fertilizer of prolonged action, which compares favorably with other modern complex fertilizers. Why is WMD the best nutrition you can offer your plants and how does it work?

The group of medicinal plants that have a general calming (sedative) effect includes a large number of aromatic herbs and shrubs. When used correctly, teas and infusions from these plants help cope with stressful situations, improve mood, eliminate or reduce nervous overexcitation. In this article we will talk about nine of the most interesting, in our opinion, medicinal plants that can be grown on the site without much difficulty.

Fragrance is not the most important feature and is not at all associated with orchids. But for some species and individual varieties, the smell is a significant addition to their main “image”. Favorite sweets, confectionery and spicy aromas are not uncommon among orchids. Vanilla aromas or more original spices in the scent notes give the delightfully bright flowers even more exotic. And you can choose spicy fragrant orchids from both popular and rare species.

Easy pear and nut muffins - sweet, juicy and delicious! The birthplace of muffins is considered to be Great Britain and America. In England, such muffins are made from rich yeast dough, in America from buttery yeast-free dough, which is loosened with baking soda or baking powder, or both at the same time. The basic muffin recipe looks something like this: 200 g flour, 200 ml milk or kefir, 100 g eggs, 100 g butter, baking powder and soda.

What does it take to get a good potato harvest? Many gardeners will say - good seed material, fertile soil, timely watering and fertilizing. But there is one negative factor that can significantly reduce the potato yield, despite the fulfillment of the above conditions - weeds. On plantations overgrown with weeds, it is not possible to obtain a rich potato harvest, and repeated weeding is one of the most labor-intensive procedures in caring for the crop.

Some of the summer residents are lucky and they acquire an estate with several mature spreading trees that create shade and cozy corners. But our new dacha had virtually no such plantings. And the half-empty area behind the chain-link mesh turned out to be completely open to prying eyes. That's why this interesting design arose, which meets the specific requirements of our family. I think our experience in constructing multifunctional plant supports will be interesting to you too.

In Australia, Cedar Anderson developed a beehive design, to extract honey from which you just need to place a container and wait until it is filled. This became the crowdfunding record holder for the speed of raising the first and second million, and now the company is 8000% complete, and there are still 25 days left until the end of fundraising.

And this is not surprising: extracting honey from hives is the most labor-intensive and time-consuming work in beekeeping. Traditionally, this operation consists of many steps, the main ones being opening the hive, removing the bees, unsealing the honeycombs and operating the centrifuge of the honey extractor. It is also possible for honey to drain without any help and then be exposed to heat. And the Australian project Flow offers a solution in which to extract honey you do not need to open the hive and disturb the bees - you only need a container into which the finished product will flow.


The idea was born on the New South Wales north coast as a result of numerous stings through protective gear and the frustration of dozens of squashed bees. Father and son Kedar and Stuart Anderson have been developing this project for a decade. The result is a plastic (BPA-free) Flow frame that is composed of partially formed honeycombs.


They finish the honeycomb with wax, add honey and seal it. The Flow frame opens in the middle. Honey flows down from two rows of honeycombs without the need to disturb the bee colony with a smoker. The comb is then closed again so that the bees can unseal the empty comb and continue collecting the product - the bees almost immediately notice that the comb is empty. Bees reuse some of the wax, which can improve productivity and honey production. The plexiglass window allows you to see when the honey is sealed and ready to be harvested.


The authors call their invention the most significant innovation in beekeeping since 1852, hinting that the Flow is on par with the Langstroth hive. It is easy to see that the new product not only saves time and makes the process painless for the bees, but also makes honey production a simple process accessible to hobbyists who are not ready to buy expensive equipment. Bees often become aggressive when their hive is dismantled. It is promised that with Flow, the beekeeper's neighbors will not notice the process of collecting honey.


There are several options available for backers: you can either get a ready-made Flow Box, or you can get multiple Flow Frames to incorporate into your own standard hive design. Prices start at $230 and can be found on the project page. For $600, a backer will receive a kit for assembling a completely finished hive, for which you only need to find bees.

The Australians claim, based on several years of observations, that bees do not have any special preferences and fill Flow combs with the same frequency as conventional frame combs. It is also stated that each frame yields up to 3 kg of honey, and the frequency of possible collection varies depending on the strength of the colony and can range from a week during the peak season to a month. The honey needs twenty minutes to two hours to drain. It is also still recommended to wear protective clothing. Of course, don’t forget to leave some of the honey for the bees to overwinter.


Of course, everyone applies for amazing honeycombs. As of March 13, more than 13,000 people had already gathered. And the media made a lot of noise. Time will tell how successful this project will be and how it will affect the prosperity of bees. But the idea is interesting anyway.

At first glance, beekeeping is a monstrously attractive business. Judge for yourself. To place an apiary you need very little space - even six acres of garden plot will do - and a single hive can be placed anywhere, even on a balcony. In the vicinity of Moscow, bee colonies can be purchased for approximately 2.5 thousand rubles, and in many regions - even much cheaper. Ready-made hives, depending on the size and design, are sold at prices starting from 2 thousand rubles, but since they are structurally wooden boxes, if you have carpentry skills, you can make them yourself.

Unlike cows, chickens or rabbits, bees do not need to be fed or cleaned up after them, and they do all the work of producing a useful product completely independently.

Moreover, this product - honey - is tasty and healthy; can be stored indefinitely without refrigeration or preservation; popular among consumers. The retail price of honey in Moscow starts from about 300 rubles/kg and, depending on the variety, can be 1000 rubles/kg or even more. Every autumn, beekeepers from all over the country come to the annual honey fair in Moscow with their products, and earn very good money.

Why then are there not beehives on every plot of land, and most people, if you ask them where the nearest apiary known to them is, will shrug their shoulders in bewilderment? The fact is that in fact the work of a beekeeper requires a number of extremely specific skills that border on art, and is therefore difficult and even dangerous. A couple of times a year you need to do things that reliably scare away almost everyone who has ever thought about having their own apiary.

Firstly, during swarming, when the bee family is divided into two, and part of the bees, together with the young queen, forms a swarm somewhere on a branch near the previous home, the beekeeper has to put on a special protective suit and remove this swarm in order to introduce it into new hive. But this is not so bad - the bees do not behave particularly aggressively, and this operation itself, strictly speaking, is not mandatory. If the young swarm is not picked up, it will fly away and settle somewhere in a hollow tree, just as bees lived millions of years before us; the apiary will not receive an increase in livestock, and that’s all. Things are much worse during the “harvesting”.

To get honey that the bees prepared for themselves, and which they are not inclined to share with anyone, you need to open the hive, remove the frames with honeycombs, sweep away the bees sitting there, print them with a special tool, extract the honey from there using a honey extractor, filter and package. Bees respond to any attempts to invade their home extremely aggressively, so beekeepers have to use special protective suits, smoke frames from the smoker, and still behave extremely carefully in order to irritate the bees as little as possible.

Bee stings are not only very painful, they can be dangerous to health and even life, especially if an allergic reaction occurs. Every year, over fifty people die from them in the world, and the culprits are not only the famous Africanized killer bees, but also the most common, “domestic” ones. And if you consider that, depending on the weather and the flowering schedule of the surrounding honey plants, this procedure sometimes has to be performed several times a season, it is not surprising that there are very, very few of those who are ready to put beehives on their plots.

However, such an antediluvian process of extracting honey turns out to be harmful and traumatic not only for beekeepers, but also for the bees themselves, many of whom die in the process.

Australian father-and-son beekeepers Stuart and Cedar Anderson spent several years developing and testing a hive design that would allow honey to be selected without disturbing the bees or interfering with the life of the bee colony. As a result, they came up with and patented a design called the Flow Hive. Many enthusiasts call this invention the second revolution in the entire history of beekeeping (the first is considered to be the invention of the modern frame hive in 1814).

The inventors took advantage of the fact that bees tend to save effort and willingly use ready-made empty honeycombs, restoring and repairing them if necessary. The Andersons created a frame with almost completed honeycomb cells, which the bees willingly completed and filled with honey. When the time comes to collect honey, the beekeeper, with one turn of a special key, moves the walls of the cells relative to each other, opening channels for the flow of honey. When all the honey has flowed into the substituted container, the key is turned in the opposite direction, the walls of the cells return to their original position and again form unfinished honeycombs, ready to receive a new portion of honey.

In this case, there is no need to open the hive and disturb the bees, which, it seems, do not even notice the operation being performed; people are completely calm near the hive during honey collection; there is no need to use smokers, protective suits, honey extractors and other specialized equipment. To determine the moment when the honeycombs are already full, and also not to disturb the frames with bee brood, a transparent window is installed in the wall of the hive, allowing you to observe its inhabitants.

In February 2015, the Andersons began raising funds on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, hoping to raise $70 thousand to launch their invention into small-scale production.

In the first 5 minutes, about $40 thousand was already received; the amount collected during the entire campaign exceeded $13 million, and the number of orders for miracle hives received from all over the world exceeded 20 thousand in the first two months alone.

As a result, instead of a small workshop, the inventors had to build a full-scale factory that meets the needs of beekeepers from all over the world - they have no competitors, since the Flow Hive design is patented, and no one else has the right to produce it.

It is possible to order only Flow frames - a minimum set of 3 pieces will cost $259 excluding shipping costs - or a fully prepared hive with 6 frames - it will cost $699. A rotary key and tubes for draining honey are included in the kit in both cases. The pleasure, by Russian standards, is not cheap - after all, for more than 50 thousand rubles, which you will have to spend on Flow Hive, you can purchase at least twenty traditional hives of domestic production.

Therefore, it is difficult to expect that the new product will become widespread among experienced beekeepers who are already accustomed to using a smoker and a honey extractor. However, on the other hand, the new product may attract many novice amateur beekeepers or even those who would like to engage in this business professionally, but have so far refrained precisely because of the difficulties associated with working in an open hive. Now, if there are sufficient available funds, anyone can set up a beehive in their garden and enjoy their own honey without much hassle.

It should be noted that, in addition to numerous delights, the new product also caused a certain number of skeptical reviews. In the forefront, of course, were traditional professional beekeepers, who said that Flow Hive kills the very spirit of beekeeping, excluding lively communication between humans and bees and turning the hive into a conveyor belt for honey production. However, it is precisely this feature that attracts most novice beekeepers to the invention, so these voices are unlikely to have been seriously heard by anyone.

A more serious objection is that the miracle hive is “tailored” specifically for the production of honey, completely ignoring other traditional beekeeping products, such as wax, bee bread, royal jelly and propolis. However, with the exception of wax, everything else from the above is used mainly in medicine and cosmetology, and everyone needs honey - so the owner of a small apiary is also unlikely to bother his head with this - the idea of ​​​​becoming a supplier of some kind looks very difficult for him some pharmaceutical giant.

The most important point noted by critics is that Flow Hive will only work if the honey in the honeycomb cells is thin enough in consistency to flow by gravity. At low temperatures, especially relevant for Russia, or sugaring, honey thickens, making the honey selection procedure impossible. Therefore, before spending money on a new product, it makes sense to familiarize yourself with the experience of enthusiastic experimenters who have already tried it out in practice under Russian conditions.

Finally, a question that arises for many who have become familiar with the Andersons’ invention: is it possible to launch independent production of their miracle hive, for example, in Russia? If we talk about the original design of Flow Hive, then, obviously, no - it is patented, and no one has the right to produce it without a license from the copyright holders.

However, it is possible that among the Russian Kulibins there will be someone who will be able to invent a different honeycomb design that allows honey to be collected without opening the hive and is not subject to patent restrictions. If the product turns out to be noticeably cheaper compared to the Andersons’ far from low-budget creation, then its production could turn out to be a very attractive and successful business.

If you liked the article, recommend it to your friends, acquaintances or colleagues related to municipal or public service. It seems to us that it will be both useful and pleasant for them.
When reprinting materials, reference to the original source is required.

On February 14, 2015, a video with a project for a revolutionary new type of hive was posted on the Internet, and on February 22, fundraising for the implementation of this project was launched. The result was stunning: the necessary funds were collected very quickly, but during the collection the amount was exceeded by more than 120 times. Today, this project is the absolute record holder of the crowdfunding site Indiegogo for the speed of raising money.

Honey without any hassle

What makes Flow hives revolutionary? The fact is that the hardest work for a beekeeper is actually extracting honey. Traditional hive designs require the following steps:

• First, the hive is opened. This already requires some strength: usually, to protect from the weather, the lids of the hives are covered with iron, and the roof covers, magazines and additional bodies are made of fairly thick and heavy boards.
• The opened hive is fumigated with a smoker, and the removed frames are cleaned of bees with a broom brush (it should be noted that it is usually not possible to completely clean it: bees are extremely stubborn insects);
• The frames are carried by hand or in a special lockable box to the pumping site. A frame completely filled with honey, even for hives of the Langsroth-Ruth design, weighs at least 2.5 - 3 kg, and the more common Dadan-Blatt frame weighs up to 5 kg. It is impossible to open the frames directly at the hive, so as not to excite the bees.
• Then the sealed frames are opened and placed in a centrifuge-honey extractor. There the honey is pumped out, and the empty frames are either placed back into the hive for new filling, or, if the pumping is the last before winter, they are placed in storage.

The invention of Australian beekeepers from New South Wales Kedar and Stuart Anderson eliminates all these time-consuming steps. Their Flow frames allow you to simply place a container and the honey will flow out of the hive on its own.

How does it work?

Flow consists of two vertical “half-frames” made of BPA-free plastic. The contours of the cells for the honeycomb are outlined on them. The bees complete the cells, fill them with honey and seal them on the outside with wax lids. After this, the beekeeper just needs to use a special key, the half-frames are moved apart, the honey flows into the resulting void and fills the substituted container through a special tube. The beekeeper returns the key to its previous position, removes the tube - and the bees can start working again. They very quickly notice that the honeycombs are empty, open them and refill them.

All operations with Flow frames are carried out through a special cover at the end of the hive, and there is no need to disturb the bees. This design allows you to do without a smoker and a protective mask when selecting honey. In addition to Flow frames, the hive is also equipped with frames of the usual design for brood and bee bread.

The Andersons, without undue modesty, consider their design to be the most significant invention in beekeeping since 1852, when the first examples of frame hives were created. The inventors claim that Flow will not only make it possible to do without additional equipment, but will also make pumping out honey almost invisible to both the bees and the neighbors of the amateur beekeeper.

For participants in the crowdfunding system, several options for purchasing frames are available - from $230 to $600, for which you will receive a ready-made hive without a bee colony. The inventors claim that, according to their observations, Flow frames are filled in exactly the same way as regular ones. You can drain up to 3 kg of honey from each, and this will take from 20 minutes to 2 hours. The time to fill the frame depends both on the strength of the bee colony and on the number of flowering honey plants around the apiary.

Assessments from beekeeping experts

The innovation was tested by beekeepers. They note the following pros and cons of the Flow framework.

• minimal disturbance and injury to bees;
• the ability to put honey production on stream;
• ease of use for the amateur beekeeper;
• Flow cells, which are too deep compared to conventional frames, do not allow queens to lay eggs there, so there is no need to worry about the death of the brood during pumping;
• With regular care during winter storage, there is no need to worry that the frame mechanism will stick together with propolis or become clogged with wax particles.

• the very use of plastic in hives is no longer very environmentally friendly;
• the use of the Flow framework makes the beekeeper’s approach too consumerist, focused only on obtaining honey, and not on the needs of the bees;
• the use of frames of a new design is possible only in hot weather: thickened honey simply will not flow into the container;
• Flow frames do not eliminate the need to disassemble the hive for inspection and treatment against mites and other pests, so you cannot completely do without a mask and smoker;
• even if the queen does not worm within Flow, who will explain to the bees that they do not need to put beebread there?

To summarize, we can say that a full assessment of the invention of Australian beekeepers can only be given when the use of hives with frames of a new design becomes widespread and beekeepers gain experience. So far, both the invention itself and the impressive speed of crowdfunding collection look impressive.

See the video for more details, it is in English, but the main meaning is clear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_pj4cz2VJM