Culture

New beehive harvests honey without bugging bees (pictures)

The Flow Hive, set for a Kickstarter crowdfunding debut, introduces a simple new way to harvest honey from a backyard beehive without stressing the bees or the beekeeper.

Amanda Kooser

Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.

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Amanda Kooser

Feb. 20, 2015 11:07 a.m. PT

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Flow Hive with bucket

A new beehive called Flow Hive hopes to attract crowdfunding backers by offering a simple way to harvest honey without stressing out the bees or the beekeeper.

This picture shows a Flow Hive arranged to drain into a bucket. The taps open up to allow the honey to flow out in an unobtrusive way.

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Tapping a hive

The Flow Hive will be available on Kickstarter as both a whole hive system and as individual frames designed to fit into certain standard beehives. The covers on top of the jars are there to discourage the bees from diving in during the honey collection.

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Inside the Flow Hive

The Flow Hive invention offers beekeepers an easy way to harvest honey without disturbing the bees. This look inside a Flow frame shows how honey drips into a channel at the bottom in order to flow out the back of a hive for collection in a container.

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Bees in a Flow frame

The Flow Hive uses a special Flow frame that comes with partial honeycomb cells. The bees finish off the cells with wax and fill them with honey. This photo of a Flow frame shows the bees busy capping the cells off.

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Pounds of Flow Hive honey

Don Anderson, grandfather of Flow Hive co-creator Cedar Anderson, shows off more than 13 pounds of honey harvested from a Flow Hive, a new type of hive system that uses a tap-like device to collect honey without bothering the bees. The honey was gathered from two Flow frames.

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Hatch opens up for hive viewing

The Flow Hive makes gathering honey easier for beekeepers. This hive has a door that opens to reveal a window showing three Flow frames inside a hive. The special Flow frames can be combined with traditional frames inside the same bee box. The frames use a tap-like system to collect honey.

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Flow Hive prototype

This Flow Hive prototype was created in 2013. The honey-collecting invention is taking the crowdfunding route and using Kickstarter to raise money to go into production. The Flow Hive is designed to make it easy to collect honey using a drain and special frames.

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Flow Hive honey on tap

The Flow Hive use a new kind of frame that separates at the turn of a "tap" to drain honey from the back of a hive. The idea is to reduce stress on both beekeepers and bees. This image demonstrates the draining of a single Flow frame. Other frames still full of honey are on either side of it.

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Close-up look at honey draining

The Flow Hive is set to launch on Kickstarter on February 23. The beekeeping invention allows for honey collection using a tap-like system that doesn't disturb the bees. While the design makes gathering honey much easier, beekeepers still need to perform regular hive maintenance and check on the health of their bees.