Australian Beekeepers Cedar and Stuart Anderson have
created an
ingenious
invention
that
turns
beehives
into
flowing
Honey Taps.
Introduction
"Beekeepers Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart have, essentially,
hacked the honeycomb—a nearly flawless geometric and structural
achievements—to make it more mechanically efficient. In a nutshell,
Flow frames have a partially formed honeycomb matrix within a
transparent frame. Bees complete the comb, fill the cells with honey
and cap them. To harvest the honey, the beekeeper inserts a tool
into the top of each frame and twists, a move that splits each cell
in the honeycomb vertically, allowing the honey to flow freely. It
is collected at the bottom through a tube."
(Source:Wired,
25th February 2015)
Cedar has been a beekeeper since the age of six,
following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather before him. Growing
up on a bushland “intentional community” in Byron Bay, northern New South
Wales, Australia, Cedar didn’t have a TV. Instead, he spent his time
tinkering and coming up with crazy inventions to delight his friends and
family.
It was during a particularly nasty summer honey harvest that he decided,
“there has to be a better way”, and got to work with his dad Stuart on the
decade-long process of inventing a gentler, easier system. The Flow Hive has
been hailed as the biggest innovation in beekeeping since 1852, and the
Andersons' company has now shipped more than 65,000 orders all around the
world.
Cedar still lives on the far north coast of New South Wales with his partner
Kylie and their two children Jarli and Mella.
Stu is a life-long beekeeper, and before the Andersons’ incredible invention
became all-consuming he was the director of a not-for-profit community
organisation based in Lismore, New South Wales.
As well as having a hand in the daily decision-making at Flow, Stu is the
man on the mic, talking Flow Hive at numerous business and beekeeping
conferences and other events, in Australia and abroad. Stu is still an avid
beekeeper with a passion for the natural world and a family man with four
kids and eight grandchildren.
A long-time tinkerer, Stu has built several houses over the years (including
the one in which Cedar was raised, and where Stu still lives with his
partner, Michele Wainwright.)
Did You Know?
What if you spend years quietly tinkering in a
shed on your invention, to find you have to take the reins of a
multi-million dollar company overnight? As Australian Story
discovers, that is the reality for Byron Bay inventor Cedar
Anderson, after his beehive invention went gangbusters on a
crowdfunding site:
YouTube:Australian Story Going With The Flow 28 October 2015
The following is taken completely from an
ABC News article: Cedar Anderson: From humble hippie to
multi-millionaire businessman - the man who revolutionised the beehive
"The idea of having a 9:00am to 5:00pm office job was
just frightening. To me, freedom is being able to do what I'm inspired to
do. It's being able to work on inventions, whenever I have an idea," Cedar
says.
But nowadays, he dreams of only a nine-to-five existence as his new venture
sees him working all hours, seven days a week.
But do not feel too sorry for him. He brought the whole thing on himself.
As a child of parents who founded a community in the
hills near Nimbin, Cedar had a wild and free childhood in nature, nurturing
his natural curiosity.
"We'd go and pull apart an old car and pull out the dashboard and get all
the light globes out and the horn and take it back and connect it to car
batteries and make the lights go and try and make an instrument out of a lot
of car horns," he said.
"I guess rather than sitting down watching the TV, we were figuring out how
things work."
Figuring out how things work became an obsession, helped by his dad Stuart,
the Mr Fix-It guy of the community.
While tinkering ran in the family, so did beekeeping.
Cedar is a third-generation beekeeper and, as a kid,
recalls pulling apart the family's bee hives, wearing makeshift bee suits
and rubber gloves gaffer-taped at the wrist.
He also remembers his brother Chris getting badly stung. A small light bulb
went off in his young head.
"There must be a better way," Cedar said.
With Stuart Anderson - his father
and co-inventor
"Ten years ago Cedar had this idea, 'come on, we must
be able to get honey from a beehive without opening it, extracting and
stressing the bees'," Stuart recalled.
Tinkering in his bush shed and living off the smell of a honey-stained rag,
Cedar began developing prototypes of what would eventually become the Flow
Hive.
In the past few years, Stuart came onboard and solved a few major design
problems.
It was a beautiful, sunny day when they walked down to the hives to see if
the prototype would work. They turned the handle and honey started to flow.
"We couldn't believe it. We just sat back in disbelief laughing. We had
invented the beekeeper's dream."
But how to get it to market? They may have been
children of the rainforest, but they were also children of the digital
revolution.
Cedar wanted to bypass the venture capital phase and take the Flow Hive
directly to consumers via a crowdfunding campaign.
The genius of this idea was that people could place an advance order for the
hive so Cedar and his team would know how many to manufacture and have the
dollars in hand to make them.
She hoped to pique interest. From the moment the video appeared, things
moved quickly.
"That video went viral overnight and had a couple of million views, and that
really kicked us into high gear. The media interest was massive," colleague
Yari McGauley explained.
The astounding success of the crowdfunding campaign garnered even more
attention.
Hoping to raise $US70,000 ($96,952) to buy a new tool for the factory, they
flew past that target in a few minutes, reaching more than $US2 million in
just one day.
At the close of the campaign eight weeks later, they had $US12.2 million in
advance orders.
After the champagne wore off, they had a major headache — of the logistical
kind.
They had to manufacture 24,000 orders and export them to more than 130
countries.
Cedar's life changed dramatically. Never a consumer, he suddenly had to
spend up big on the infrastructure to keep things running.
"All of a sudden they're telling me I have to have an office and I don't
want an office, that's my worst nightmare, but okay, we need an office, and
now they want me to go to the office," Cedar laughed.
It's a steep learning curve of how to manage a team of employees and
negotiate a complex business — not to mention how to be a dad.
To add to the general chaos, his partner Kylie Ezart gave birth to their son
Jhali in the middle of the campaign.
Although Cedar admits to feeling stress for the first time in his life, his
brother Gabe has been surprised by his demeanour.
"He's just taking it in his stride and he's quite calm and collected about
it. He just works through what he needs to work through, it doesn't seem to
faze him at all."
No-one thinks their sudden wealth will change Cedar or Stuart.
Both of them are still driving their old utes around, running them on
vegetable oil to save money and the environment.
"Yeah, I have changed," Cedar laughs.
"With a bit of coaching, I went and purchased my first new pair of shoes in
20 years. It was a bit of a dropping of the guard."
(Source: ABC News)
The Flow Hive is a plastic frame with a honeycomb matrix.
The bees build on the frame, fill the cells with honey and cap them
off.
A lever is then turned outside of the hive, which splits the cells
open.
The honey drains down through the channel and through a tube into a
jar at the bottom.
YouTube:Why
the world needs backyard inventors | Cedar Anderson | TEDxBrisbane
3 March 2018 https://youtu.be/A_9B7H4bFE0
Students are to complete 3 activities on the Honey Bee.
Connect Three is a way of seeing if students have understood the work
completed in Science on the Honey Bee.
Plan an essay discussing
the ethics of using Flow Hive.
Give a couple of dot points to and against
Create a short role play
to explain the terms: Manuka honey vs Honey
This role play is to be a comedy with at least 2 characters
Create a Venn Diagram
showing the jobs of the Worker Bee, the Queen Bee and the Drone.
What are the similarities and differences between these three?
Draw one Native Bee on a
$2 Australian stamp showing the need to conserve these bees.
Use this
website
Create a cartoon about
bees within the Flow Hive using one of the programmes listed
here
Play the Game "The Way
of the Waggle Dance"
What was your score?