| Cute idea. But as a beekeeper in the Bay Area, I have to agree with @tehchromic--there's some tricky stuff to consider to make this work: - How will they prevent the bees from covering the internal mechanism with wax? Bees often cover plastic foundations with layer of wax as they build up the cells. - More troubling, why won't the bees cover the mechanism with propolis (bee glue)? Bees tend to want to cover any crack with the stuff, which is really, really sticky stuff. Any time we've accidentally left an opening (that's not the entrance) somewhere in our hives, the bees have completely sealed it up with propolis, which is then extremely difficult to clean off. - How will the honey flow freely? At bay area temperatures during Spring/early summer harvests, the temperature isn't high enough that the honey will flow freely when uncapped--it'd take on the order of at least 15 minutes, and more likely an hour or more if you want to do it cleanly, but leaving a jar of honey out for that long is going to attract all kinds of pests, and also bees, which kind of defeats the purpose of this. - How do you clean this? As tehchromic mentions, this is going to have serious crystallization issues. During normal centrifuge or wax-scraping harvests, you end up having to wash all your equipment pretty thoroughly afterwards, or else the honey crystallizes and makes everything gunk up. - Why would the bees uncap the harvested cells? I agree long-term that this would happen if you harvested a lot of honey, but I've rarely seen bees uncap the central stores of honey you're harvesting from, especially if you're careful about what you harvest to leave the bees enough for the winter. - How will you deal with the additional pests and diseases? More nooks and crannies will encourage more pests to enter and roost. Having a spigot also encourages bad beekeeping, especially harvesting before the cells are capped. Honey is supersaturated sugars, which is why it doesn't go bad. But if you end up harvesting before it's capped, you're going to get nectar or sugar water that will actually go bad and additionally play host to a ton of pests and diseases. Overall, I love that this is going viral--I honestly hope it attracts a bunch of new people to beekeeping, and I'm curious enough to support the Kickstarter and try one out, but I'm guessing those who stick with it will switch to normal Langstroth hives after a season or two. |