Easy tap beehive, is this cool or what?

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First off, I am no expert on beekeeping but have one hive. I am not sure how this design works. When bees produce honey they fill comb with the fresh honey and cap the individual cell with comb, storing the honey for later use. There is never honey flowing around in the hive. When you harvest honey, you remove a frame of fully capped honey, cut off the caps and drain honey, usually in a spinning extractor.

So, I guess my main concern with the design is how does it prevent the bees from capping the honey in the comb?
 
Doesn't. As I understand it, it taps the comb from the back, without disturbing the bees. Not continuously, but when you decide you want to.
 
I think you will have to uncap the comb to ensure a no suction flow but it looks like a very smart and feasible idea.
 
That looks pretty cool. Is it maybe harvesting the uncapped honey(nectar) in the comb? No wax or chunks of stuff coming out the tube. Must have some kind of build in filter. Honey coming out the end of a hive would soon have about a thousand bees covering it and drowning in all that sticky stuff. Some one besides me needs to give to their Kickstart page and tell us about it.
 
Right you are Honeycon. I didn't think about how the bees would react to the scent of honey outside the hive, much less robber bees.

The idea looks appealing but I need to see some design or pictures of the guts of this thing.
 
Am I the only one here with beekeeping experience? Bees build out comb on foundation.... usually wired bee's wax foundation with a honeycomb imprint, more recently (and I haven't used it as I haven't kept bees for many years) there is a plastic foundation. Comb is used for brood and for honey. Bees are extremely particular and extremely industrious. If the foundation was porous or had any opening, it would immediately be plugged with wax. The bees put nectar in the cells and evaporate the moisture out of it by circulating air through the hive. When the nectar is reduced to honey the cells are capped with wax. At that point you have thick viscous honey. The idea that it will somehow wick out of the cells and drain down out of the hive is beyond absurd. The only way out of the cells possible would be through the foundation. It would have to be punctured AFTER the cells were sealed. As cells are filled and capped steadily and in no particular order. That creates an impossible problem...............
This is an obvious scam........... a great way to con people out of money through a kick starter campaign. Show it to your local beekeeper .... hear him laugh.


HW
 
Hey OWLY055, just trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. I am a beekeeper and have serious doubts if that thing is real. Sometimes you just have to believe!(and send them money)
 
nwallen said:
Another novice (3rd yr) beekeeper here.. - I was skeptical too but I can also envision a few ways to go about something like this.

This looks like their method & patent.

The other methods I envision would require the frame to be removed & cleaned before reuse by the bees.


Edit: This review by Michael Bush might be worth reading too..
Click to expand...

All I can say is that this is truly bizarre........... The person who wrote this patent obviously was NOT a beekeeper of any experience of knowledge as shown in a number of statements. It was clearly written in such a way as to be useful to a patent troll rather than someone with an interest in manufacturing a real product. Clearly the intent was to gain royalty income by listing ideas that he envisioned someone else might resort to. I would call it pure BS. His knowledge of patent law obviously far exceeded his knowledge of bees.

H.W.
 
Well.... I'm guessing my 5 yr old son knows about as much about patent law as I do but in much more simplistic terms, that would be pretty unwise of Mr. Bush to go on record in support of them then, huh?
Owly055 said:
All I can say is that this is truly bizarre........... The person who wrote this patent obviously was NOT a beekeeper of any experience of knowledge as shown in a number of statements. It was clearly written in such a way as to be useful to a patent troll rather than someone with an interest in manufacturing a real product. Clearly the intent was to gain royalty income by listing ideas that he envisioned someone else might resort to. I would call it pure BS. His knowledge of patent law obviously far exceeded his knowledge of bees.

H.W.
Click to expand...
 
Ok I watch the video and not once did that hive have any bees in it. Anyone who has any hive would tell you there is always a lot of activity around the hives.
Even if that thing worked (witch it doesn't) you still would have to disassemble the hive anyways. You still need to inspect the hive to see how healthy the hive is. It not a set it and forget it hobby. Plus harvesting the honey is the best part of the hobby.
 
I have a few years of beekeeping experience on a commercial level. My dad and I along with a couple other guys run close to 3000 hives. I guess I can't see how this could ever work. The biggest thing for me is, no matter how you go about extracting honey, it would NEVER flow so clean that you could put it on pancakes like they were doing. I think this is something that will never be used by more than a couple people and certainly not well. If you had a large, healthy hive you'd have to have a dozen of those tubes all over the place. And how can honey flow out of a hive that has been capped? I suppose if I ever see this product in real life, with my own two (sometimes four) eyes, I might be proven wrong.
 
Always like to welcome newbies to the list, especially when they join in a thread like this for the first time :) WVMJ

nwallen said:
Another novice (3rd yr) beekeeper here.. - I was skeptical too but I can also envision a few ways to go about something like this.

This looks like their method & patent.

The other methods I envision would require the frame to be removed & cleaned before reuse by the bees.


Edit: This review by Michael Bush might be worth reading too..
Click to expand...
 
Depending on what they're going to cost when they are released I just might order one to see how and if it really works or not.
 
Kickstarter is about raising money...... send money and you have absolutely no guarantee that you will ever see anything. Somebody is using Kickstarter to scam gullible people into sending money for a promise of getting a copy of a product when it comes out that is not yet fully developed. There are no guarantees and no real oversight. It is a wonderful tool for real inventors to raise funds to bring their ideas to market, and an equally wonderful tool for crooks to scam folks out of money. Only a sucker would send these guys money.......... You are never going to see a "product".

H.W.
 
Owly055 said:
Kickstarter is about raising money...... send money and you have absolutely no guarantee that you will ever see anything. Somebody is using Kickstarter to scam gullible people into sending money for a promise of getting a copy of a product when it comes out that is not yet fully developed. There are no guarantees and no real oversight. It is a wonderful tool for real inventors to raise funds to bring their ideas to market, and an equally wonderful tool for crooks to scam folks out of money. Only a sucker would send these guys money.......... You are never going to see a "product".

H.W.
Click to expand...

No kidding, that's why you wait till it is available through a reputable suppliers.
 
I have a couple hives and have been at it for several years. I'm on a few different sites with pretty knowledgeable beeks. I haven't seen anyone with hives who has in any way said that this will work or is viable.

I have really tried to figure it out - I cannot come up with anything that would make this work.
 
I used to have a trained flock of bees. Or is it a herd? Can't remember. But them trained bees, why they'd bring that honey right to a quart mason jar I had a settin' right there on the porch. And right next to that jar, I had a little thank you waitin' for 'em with a little somethin' extree in it. (Some of that "other" liquor we made out back from corn mash). Had to be careful though, put too much in and them bees would spend the next day flyin' around in circles. Why I member one time when my neighbor, ol' Pickle Pete, we would be a settin' on the porch and he reached over and spilled a little too much of that corn liquor into their thank-you jar, and them bees just up and disappeared for 3 days. Then one day I heard all this hootin' an holloran' from the hives, hell there was even an old honky tonk a playin' in the background. I could hear glasses tinklin', cards a shufflin, and you know that damned hive was filled with queen bees? They even figured a way to put swingin' doors on that durned hive. Then one day the sheriff showed up, said he was lookin' for a couple a bees wearin' masks. I asked him what they'd done, he said they robbed a train not far from here. Guess they flew right in a open winder, robbed old ladies of their jewelry, old men of their pocket watches, and flew right back out the winder with the loot. He said the train never even stopped. I scratched my head said, I'll be damned. He said there was a wanted poster out on 'em. I asked him what they'd looked like? He said, small, had a pair of wings, black and yeller stripes. Told him I'd keep a look out, and asked if there was a re-ward. He said yep, 10 dollars was the re-ward.

But you know how I know this story is all BS? Ain't no train tracks for miles around.
 
A more detailed patent: http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/...1DQdQ1nhgBvTQ7PQbzjJTtKz4m2qvGnW!-1687143938#

It appear to me this is a plastic base for the bees to build on, with interlocking sections such that, in one position they form the appropriate honey comb, but when slid relative to each other, form a continuous passage to the bottom. (Page five of the drawing is particularly informative.) With a cam mechanism to accomplish the sliding.

There are a lot of speculative embodiments, that's pretty typical of patent applications.

But it makes enough sense to me, as a mechanical engineer, (But NOT a bee keeper!) that I'm going to take a close look when their kickstart opens up.
 
Jsmtg32 said:
No kidding, that's why you wait till it is available through a reputable suppliers.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, without people putting up money, ideas go nowhere. If everybody waits, it never happens. It's a good idea to support and promote what you believe in.......... I personally would never invest a dime in a scam like this one.

H.W.
 
Looks like a great theory, but I'll not spend any money on anything like it (let alone send money to pay their way through development) until it has a proven track record in use. Even then, it'll have to be cost effective. Which I doubt it ever will be.

I laughed at the video. Have not seen a collection of Ferals like that in one place for a while. :)

Lesse. A bunch of intricate moving parts, put into an environment full of creatures evolved to glue down anything with a sharp edge or a gap in it. Oh. And honey, to get into the mechanism. What could go wrong?

I won't throw away my extractor just yet.

TeeJo
 
My version is foolproof. After the honeycombs are full, a klaxxon siren goes off giving the bees a 5 min warning. After that the walls close in and squish everything inside into extract the honey. Then the walls reopen, the bottom drops out the wax, and the bees are given an 'all clear' to return to the hive and the process starts over.

Who wants to bankroll this? :cross:
 
As a beekeeper, I actually want this idea to succeed. Bees are into applying propolis and wax to every tiny bit of the interior of a hive. The Easy Tap could maybe work, for a couple of cycles, then add sticky honey to the moving parts and watch it all just stop. Then you get to take it apart and clean it all out ?
But hey, removable frames were probably once looked at with suspicion.
 
grrickar said:
My version is foolproof. After the honeycombs are full, a klaxxon siren goes off giving the bees a 5 min warning. After that the walls close in and squish everything inside into extract the honey. Then the walls reopen, the bottom drops out the wax, and the bees are given an 'all clear' to return to the hive and the process starts over.

Who wants to bankroll this? :cross:
Click to expand...
I can lend you some of my trained bees if you need, just make sure they don't get rough with the queen, they've been locked up in the coral as punishment for a while.
 
My first thought on this, and I am NOT a beekeeper, is how do you not drain the entire hive? I would hope they only have these slider plates for part of the comb? It would be way to easy for people to just leave the spigot on and the whole hive starves in winter.

Am I thinking that through correctly?
 
Well, don't most hives have more than one comb? You do obviously have to leave enough honey in the hive to winter over the bees, (Unless you're going to feed them syrup, which is the bee equivalent of living on instant ramen.) and that's beekeeping 101.
 
Saw this the other night on Compass on the ABC. They interviewed the Australian inventors and they demonstrated the product. It is indeed real and working
 
On another forum, I saw the number floated around of ~$600 for enough hardware to do a single super worth of frames.

Not gonna happen in my lifetime.

Until it is real, working, reliable, and most of all, affordable, it's just a novelty act.

TeeJo
 
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbMV9qYIXqM[/ame]

I know nothing about bees, just found the link interesting.
 
Brett_Bellmore said:
Well, don't most hives have more than one comb? You do obviously have to leave enough honey in the hive to winter over the bees, (Unless you're going to feed them syrup, which is the bee equivalent of living on instant ramen.) and that's beekeeping 101.
Click to expand...

See video below for answer. It appears they have thought this through.

TeeJo said:
On another forum, I saw the number floated around of ~$600 for enough hardware to do a single super worth of frames.

Not gonna happen in my lifetime.

Until it is real, working, reliable, and most of all, affordable, it's just a novelty act.

TeeJo
Click to expand...

$600 seem inexpensive to me.

watermelon83 said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbMV9qYIXqM

I know nothing about bees, just found the link interesting.
Click to expand...

Amazing. And kudos to them.
 
$600 will normally buy you enough woodenware and bees to start 2 new complete colonies from scratch.

That is, 4 full depth supers (the boxes), enough frames to fill each of them (normally ten frames per super), foundation, top and bottom boards, all brand new at retail. Way way less than that for the woodenware if you are half handy with a table saw.

I tried out plastic frames with foundation built in this last year. Cost about 25 cents a frame more than buying wooden frames and installing the wax sheet foundation, so an extra $5 per hive. The bees seemed OK with them.

A package of bees (~3 pounds of worker bees, and a young bred queen) is near enough to $200 right now here.

Then you put your $600 box on top of that for the bees to maybe fill.

Buying nucleus hives from local producers, or splitting your own hives and producing your own queens, is far far cheaper too.

But that gives you a reference point as to what $600 is worth in beekeeping.

This is a hippy happiness idea being sold hard (and well, I might add) to the ignorant, many of whom already thought that all you did was walk up to the hive and the happy bees just gave you the honey for the asking.

You can send them money. I won't.

Most of the folks that are mooching for money at least promise the delivery of some goods or services. These guys just want the money. They promise to use it to develop their product so they might eventually sell it.

Hows about this. You all send me money so I can start a business to sell you stuff. What do you get for sending me money? A thank you, if you send enough. But I get your money.

That's what I see here.

TeeJo
 
TeeJo said:
$600 will normally buy you enough woodenware and bees to start 2 new complete colonies from scratch.

That is, 4 full depth supers (the boxes), enough frames to fill each of them (normally ten frames per super), foundation, top and bottom boards, all brand new at retail. Way way less than that for the woodenware if you are half handy with a table saw.

I tried out plastic frames with foundation built in this last year. Cost about 25 cents a frame more than buying wooden frames and installing the wax sheet foundation, so an extra $5 per hive. The bees seemed OK with them.

A package of bees (~3 pounds of worker bees, and a young bred queen) is near enough to $200 right now here.

Then you put your $600 box on top of that for the bees to maybe fill.

Buying nucleus hives from local producers, or splitting your own hives and producing your own queens, is far far cheaper too.

But that gives you a reference point as to what $600 is worth in beekeeping.

This is a hippy happiness idea being sold hard (and well, I might add) to the ignorant, many of whom already thought that all you did was walk up to the hive and the happy bees just gave you the honey for the asking.

You can send them money. I won't.

Most of the folks that are mooching for money at least promise the delivery of some goods or services. These guys just want the money. They promise to use it to develop their product so they might eventually sell it.

Hows about this. You all send me money so I can start a business to sell you stuff. What do you get for sending me money? A thank you, if you send enough. But I get your money.

That's what I see here.

TeeJo
Click to expand...

Wow. Bee up your butt much?

I'm not saying they have figured it out but, it is possible that they have lucked onto a concept that people like you have just been too blind sided to believe is real. And for that, I sincerely hope this thing is legit.

Nope. Not a beekeeper. But, I do know what it takes to "produce" honey. Any adult who doesn't, is really just a dolt and probly oblivious to where half their food comes from.

I did not realize that the $600 was just for the "comb mechanism" alone. I had assumed that the $600 got you the entire hive, minus bees. If that were the case, I would say that $600 is inexpensive for this product if proven.

You go ahead and be the overt skeptic. I for one will root for the underdog.
 

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