Unless you’ve had your head stuck in the sand, you’ll have heard that the world’s bee population is dwindling.
But now, a father and son duo is trying to not only save our little buzzy friends, but drastically increase their numbers!
Stuart and Cedar Anderson have spent the best part of a decade figuring out how to harvest honey without disturbing the bees that make it.
So they started an Indiegogo-funded project that replicates a real beehive without harming the bees or putting them in any danger when it’s time to harvest honey.
The Flow Hive, as they call it, allows the honey to flow out of the hive straight into a jar without crushing or disrupting the bees inside. What a brilliant design!
Cedar Anderson, a third-generation Australian beekeeper hails from the rural community of Nimbin. He says that the idea was inspired simplify the design of a beehive after his brother was repeatedly stung during one of their grueling honey harvest missions.
In 2015 Flow Hive, having raised $12.2 million became the most successful crowdfunding campaign in Indiegogo history! Fast forward to four years later and the Flow Hive has directly helped create over 50,000 new beehive colonies. This has resulted in a staggering 10% rise in the world’s bee colonies. This is absolutely inspiring. Good job guys!
Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture said:
“The rate of beginners getting into beekeeping has more than doubled in a decade.”
The father and son team have shipped their beehives all around the world. So far that have managed to ship the invention to 150 different countries!
Honeybee populations are still falling across the globe due to habitat loss and the overuse of pesticides. Remember folks, if the bees die, we die! They’re the planets most prolific pollinator and without them we would fall very fast into complete oblivion, unable to farm and produce food.
The company has also decided to donate all of its profits to honeybee advocacy groups.
Honey beehiveCedar said:
“We’re proud to have donated 100% of profits from the sale of our Flow Pollinator House to nine local grassroots pollinator projects in Australia and the United States that are at work protecting wild habitats all around the world. Pollinators need large areas of habitat to flourish—the more we can do to protect and conserve native habitats, the more opportunities these tiny environmental champions will have to do their important work.”
Meanwhile, if you cant buy a Flow Hive, you can still help save the declining bee population by building a homemade bee hotel with bamboo shoots, bricks, or wood with holes drilled in them.
The Flow Hive and the newer Flow Hive 2 beehives can be purchased from the Honey Flow (click here) website.
