[roddycm]

I don't have bees gt thought this looked great! Beekeepers would no longer need to disturb the hive to get the honey! I looks very clever http://www.boredpanda.com/honey-on-tap-flow-hive-stuart-cedar-anderson/ what are your thoughts? Less stress for the bees surely?

[Caroline1]

Seen this all over Facebook and not convinced. My opinion is that it would encourage bees to rob as it is so close. It is very likely you would get unripe honey included as you couldn't check before extracting. And the big one is honey needs to be warm to flow nicely, this may work in Australia but don't think our climate would cooperate.

[cloddopper]

It seems do-able even in the UK as internal hive temps are fairly standard.

It would be interesting to find out a lot more ,for I guess you would still have to attend each hive almost daily to see how well the special comb was filing & being capped .

 I wonder how would the bees know that the full capped frames ware robbed by the be keeper and not still full of honey so that they can open the emptied cells and start filling them again.

 I used to use a refractometer to see the water content of honey I seem to recall that anything above 18 % was considered still unfinished , liable to ferment & therefore not legal for sale at the garden gate , local outlets of in bulk to the likes of Rowse , Nestle etc.

[benkt]

As we have so much oil seed rape around, my concern would be crystallisation in the tubes. Not sure how they plan to keep them clear and flowing, but I bet it's a devil to wash!

[cloddopper]

Maybe you can just have it on drain 24.7 during a rape flow.
 I seem ( don't hold me to it I've had a stroke and lost a few terabytes of neck top computer memory ), to remember that it is a nearly low enough water content to pass as honey,  So if you set it up in a heated fanned ripening cabinet to evaporate the final excess water it should legally pass as saleable honey so long as you don't over heat it ..

[Orinlooper]

Seems to have been a flash in the pan idea to raise money.

If it was that great beekeeper should be using it by now.

I'm more interested in the way the Vikings made whole hive honey and mead, it's seems easier. Just warm water and dunk the entire hive above the queen excluder in it.

The wax then goes to the top for extraction. You can then eat whole hive honey with all the dead bees and their venom, royal jelly and propolis. Wonderful suff.

[Orinlooper]

I wanted to wait a while to see if any experienced beekeepers tried this and could report on it. I still can't find any.

You have to look at both sides of the coin, I can find reports how wonderful it is, where are the reports of the problems so we can believe it's real?

[Orinlooper]

I wanted to wait a while to see if any experienced beekeepers tried this and could report on it. I still can't find any.

You have to look at both sides of the coin, I can find reports how wonderful it is, where are the reports of the problems so we can believe it's real?

So the flow hive system has been out for a while now, most who tried it have gone back to conventional