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Extractor-less honey by Flow Hive

825K views 2K replies 255 participants last post by  clong 
#1 ·
#3 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

Michael Bush is quoted on that site as saying ...

“Mind Blowing...It's not very often something is so revolutionary as to blow my mind...Saving 20% of harvest labor is not trivial, 40% is amazing, 60% is revolutionary. But 95%, that’s Mind Boggling!”
Since the only way that Honeyflow offers more information is if you give them your email address,:no: perhaps we could get Michael to confirm that he actually made the quoted comment, and offer us a few more details? :D
 
#6 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

That reeks of a scam.

I've fiddled with the idea many times. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could extract the honey without removing the comb from the supers?" The reverse operation would be just as appealing: "wouldn't it be nice if we could fill combs with feed directly?"

I don't believe this would be possible without some kind of pump and absurdly think and expensive frames. They don't show any of this, through the glass we can see what looks like completely normal frames.

Continuous drip also seems like a dubious claim, leading me to suspect they simply had a bottle of honey inside slowly pouring through their tap. First of all, they show some kind of timelapse where the jars fill up, completely open, for what appears to be hours. And nothing gets in! I scrape just a tiny bit of honey comb in my apiaries and within minutes it's a humming ball of bees or yellow jackets. They leave out honey for hours and not a single bee goes in the jar? Furthermore, bees don't harvest honey, they harvest nectar! Continuous-drip would suggest that whatever the bees put in the frames would flow, and flow right away, but that's obviously ripened honey in the video as it's very thick.

When they speak in front of the hive, the window seems to suggest there's a lot of bees on the frame behind it. If you actually stare at it while they talk, the bees don't move, except in just one shoot. Looks like they just slid a picture of a frame of bees behind there.

On the window that shows the sides of the comb, that looks awfully tight, doesn't look like there is bee-space between the comb.

They did give out a bunch of references one can easily contact, though. The professor's email, if someone wants to ask her if she was indeed talking about their product, is: Danielle.Lloyd-Prichard@newcastle.edu.au

Michael Bush is also on BeeSource, so I'd expect him to be able to comment on it.
 
#1,262 ·
That reeks of a scam.

I've fiddled with the idea many times. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could extract the honey without removing the comb from the supers?" The reverse operation would be just as appealing: "wouldn't it be nice if we could fill combs with feed directly?"

I don't believe this would be possible without some kind of pump and absurdly think and expensive frames. They don't show any of this, through the glass we can see what looks like completely normal frames.

Continuous drip also seems like a dubious claim, leading me to suspect they simply had a bottle of honey inside slowly pouring through their tap. First of all, they show some kind of timelapse where the jars fill up, completely open, for what appears to be hours. And nothing gets in! I scrape just a tiny bit of honey comb in my apiaries and within minutes it's a humming ball of bees or yellow jackets. They leave out honey for hours and not a single bee goes in the jar? Furthermore, bees don't harvest honey, they harvest nectar! Continuous-drip would suggest that whatever the bees put in the frames would flow, and flow right away, but that's obviously ripened honey in the video as it's very thick.

When they speak in front of the hive, the window seems to suggest there's a lot of bees on the frame behind it. If you actually stare at it while they talk, the bees don't move, except in just one shoot. Looks like they just slid a picture of a frame of bees behind there.

On the window that shows the sides of the comb, that looks awfully tight, doesn't look like there is bee-space between the comb.

They did give out a bunch of references one can easily contact, though. The professor's email, if someone wants to ask her if she was indeed talking about their product, is: Danielle.Lloyd-Prichard@newcastle.edu.au

Michael Bush is also on BeeSource, so I'd expect him to be able to comment on it.

I think you were quick to doubt this. A very clear demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=177&v=ryWC92NT2Eo
 
#8 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

Honey would have to be properly cured and capped. I suspect a frame matrix on which the comb is built that is somehow able to be opened/ broken. Like if the inner foundation could be broken by slight movement once the time was right, therefore breaking the cell walls and allowing the honey to ooze down the inside middle of the frame, into a screened collection area...
 
#11 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

If you need to manually remove some kind of foundation to allow the honey to flow, frame by frame, and then wait days for it to actually flow, you are most definitely not saving 95% of your labor costs. I'd actually imagine it to be more expensive than how things are currently done.
 
#12 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

I would call myself cautiously pessimistic on this one. If it works, but it costs 50 a frame not including any other necessary plumbing it is a huge fail. If you could outfit a hive for $100 you would probably get some backyarders, but commercial folks don't use telescopic covers, can't imagine they would want this piece of kit.
 
#14 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

The unfortunate thing is that some people will believe anything that is pretty packaged -- and it is on the internet, so it must be true.

These people did not remember that open containers (to include plates of pancakes) will attract bees, but these open containers only attracted smiling people in on the scam!

A reasonable inference from the absence of any foraging bees on the exposed liquid: it is not honey! Bees do not lie, nor would they be lazy as suggested by their absence.

I suggest the exquisite website and video are either (1) a scam to get money from the unwary, or (2) someone's marketing attempt to attract attention. To create the expectation that honey flows out of the hive in this manner should never come from a reputable honey equipment merchant.
 
#16 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

I would consider a couple different things...1) because of the number of people involved, if it was me, I MIGHT use an empty hive for illustation purposes, thus explaining the absence of bees around the product....2) I dont think, with his reputation and respect, Mr Bush is going to allow his name on something like this without an explanation pretty quick.
It doesnt actually say there is no labor involved. What about uncapping, then putting frames in to a series of drains? Could this just be uncapped frames draining? No extractor needed. Im very curious but hanging on to my money.
Ray
 
#17 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

Seems like someone found their patent application and put it on their facebook page.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20140370781.pdf

Might be legit. I remain skeptical on how economic a solution it would be, however. Seems like the mechanics slide the cells against each other, opening them all. Sounds messy.

The video is obviously staged, they concept might work but for most of the shots it looks like they used an empty hive so that we don't see any stinging or robbing. The patent also doesn't seem to promote this "put a jar in front of the hive" application, but tubes with bulk containers that are bee-tight.
 
#18 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

I grew up on a dairy farm and used to show cows at a local fair when I was a kid. a classmate named roger used to show brown swiss. a local dealer used to give free milk to the kids. roger got about 15 pints of chocolate milk put it in a milking machine and milked his cow. he waited for some city people to come along and dumped a couple of gallons chocolate milk into a pail and explained brown cows gave chocolate milk. maybe ya had to be there but the same people would sign up for this great invention.
 
#19 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

Imagine if Beesource existed in the mid-1800's and L.L Langstroth posted that he had invented a way to keep bees, manage bees, collect honey and pollen, and he could do all of this without destroying the combs in the hive. Imagine the nay-sayers, "gotta be a scam" , "that's impossible", "can't be cost effective", "maybe for the hobbyist but not folks with dozens of skeps". lol
 
#21 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

Imagine if Beesource existed in the mid-1800's and L.L Langstroth posted that he had invented a way to keep bees, manage bees, collect honey and pollen, and he could do all of this without destroying the combs in the hive. Imagine the nay-sayers, "gotta be a scam" , "that's impossible", "can't be cost effective", "maybe for the hobbyist but not folks with dozens of skeps". lol
It's not because it's been done a certain way for a long time that it can't be improved, but it's also not because it's new that it's better.

When something new has a lot of marketing efforts behind it, grand claims, and yet offers no technical explanation whatsoever, nor prices, it is clearly just trying to create hype and you should be skeptical.
 
#20 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

I can just imagine the pushback there was the first time someone said "Lets make foundation out of plastic!". Im sure there will be people that try this. It may be worth the cost for the experimental and amusement value, especially if its not too expensive, but for now I think I want more info. Im actually very curious. I cant wait to see what it really is. Maybe my buddy up the road will invest in this system and I can see how it works before I spend my money.
Ray
 
#27 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

It looks to me like they've patented the idea that you can cut hexagonal comb vertically into slats that, when every other slat is shifted upwards, turns it into channels that (in theory) drain downwards. So they have a patent on that idea. Then with a lot of money kick-started to them, they can explore the rest of the problem of how to extract honey by waving a wand over a closed box.
 
#28 ·
Re: Extractor-less honey by- "Honey Flow"

It looks to me like they've patented the idea that you can cut hexagonal comb vertically into slats that, when every other slat is shifted upwards, turns it into channels that (in theory) drain downwards. So they have a patent on that idea. Then with a lot of money kick-started to them, they can explore the rest of the problem of how to extract honey by waving a wand over a closed box.
I read the patent I looks like they plan to imbed a heating element to help liquify the honey to get it to flow down through the channels, in theory it would warm up prior to opening them and would be too warm for the bees so they would leave the comb and not get squished in the process of sliding the cells. It's pretty ingenious if it works, but I fear heating honey comb and breaking it open will set of one heck of a robbing frenzy
 
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