Okay, this just blew me away. I’m a honey lover but I’ve also always wondered about the whole honey extraction process where beekeepers break open the hives, stress the bees and get stung.

After ten years of trial and error, a father and son team from Australia have come up with a winning design. It’s not just for beekeepers—this bee-friendly flow hive can sit in your back yard or patio. Yes, DIY beekeeping without the sting. How cool is that?

Clearly the public agrees.

An Indiegogo fundraising campaign has raised a whopping nine million dollars so far (a record in the site’s history) to help roll this product out for mass production and sale.

Despite this looking like all good news, some traditional beekeepers are worried. They say that opening up the hive to inspect the health of the colony is an essential practice because a diseased hive can affect other hives in the region. In other words, there is more to bee-keeping than extracting honey—it’s also about care-taking the bees. One bee-keeper sees it as a fad for amateurs only and itemizes just how this automation can harm bees and lead to imperfect honey. He makes a good point that money should be raised go toward research into how to save the bees that are under environmental duress these days, not just how to get more honey with less effort.

Nonetheless, the invention seems destined to become the latest trend in amateur beekeeping circles.

This video is quite compelling if you love your honey…especially for the health benefits of taking it every morning with warm water and lemon. 

Bonus Video: Waylon interviews the King of the Bees.

 Relephant: 

5 Somethings Wrong with your Honey.

Author: Lori Ann Lothian

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Video Screenshot

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