Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yeah was amusing.

As was the 5 stages of acceptance post.

I find the personal attacks on the inventor to be the most repugnant.

Some idiot did a reverse whois lookup and found that cedar anderson had a previous business that the poster found offensive. From this, he managed to infer that the project had a "a smidgen of concern" because of this.

The sites he owned were not offensive in any way shape or form except maybe to a prudish person who is offended by the word "sex". They were neither pornographic (per se), fetishist or suggestive of any type of scam so to infer that there is concern because of these is offensive in the extreme.

The guy is just trying to make a quid while pursuing an awesome idea, and this makes the idea suspect???

LOL...that forum has a bunch of arrogant know it all's. DIY'ers with new ideas are always shunned unless you make an exact copy of a Langstroth. DIY rules here and make this site what it is! Michael Bush has even responded to some of my questions and is always respectful to everyone. He got a free Flowhive to test and just stated his observations. No endorsements. He had already thought of all the concerns/complaints and shut them down.

I think it's a great idea but maybe should of been pushed to the BY hobbyists and small operations. Once you mention labor savings and brought out the pancakes SHTF LOL.

I didn't see that one

I think that whoever they "pushed" the product at they certainly succeeded. Looks like they are on track to crack $2.3mil by the end of today.

The point that I thought was/could be relevant was for large scale commercial operations the savings may not be as large. If large scale operations are producing honey by the IBC how to they efficiently get it from the hive tubes to the IBC?

I'm sure it is possible and they may already have a solution to that problem. There are photos of tubes being connected to pipe lines in a commercial operation.

It was on page 15, but has subsequently been removed or edited. It was a comment made by Wchestnut

food grade pneumatics.
Even a food grade pump will do the job.

may need some warming, but that wouldnt be hard.

People don't like change and what they are unfamiliar with must be impossible or at least unfeasible

Peristaltic pumps and nobody could claim unfamiliarity.

I think to get a proper understanding you need to hear the criticism if you are thinking about making any kind of investment. It does sound too good to be true. The promo also says you do still need all the beek gear for checking bee health. How often would that be required?

the period won't change, you still need to open the hive and check your bees. They are working their asses off for us. Which is why in my first Winter with bees, I left them with all the honey they made. We try to not stress them too much anyway.

The thread that was linked to earlier was very instructive. I must say that as I started reading it I my buyers remorse started to grow rather quite quickly. Seeing Micheal Bush's comments put that to rest pretty quickly if not completely. Which isn't to say that its garunteed to work but Micheal was very prepared to back his statements up with his expertise (WHICH IS MASSIVE) but also to say what were the limits of his experience with this product. Very clam, straight forward frank advice on the pros without hype while revealing the limits of what he could know and admitting that the only way to truly know was to give it a go.

His discussion comparing the required change of hive management and comparing it to the similar change of management that was required from skeps to langstroth hives was particularly instructive.

This invention purports to be a major advance in the art of bee keeping that eliminates some of the most onerous tasks in keeping bees. It is not claiming to be anything more than that. You still have to learn about bees, their behaviour, needs, wants desires, health, life cycle and a host of other factors which I'm too inexperienced to even know what they are.

I think a lot of people will buy one of their hives thinking that all they need to do is turn a tap to get the honey. They are in for a rude shock and/or disappointment. Some of the negative comments are saying that in a couple of years we are going to start seeing a stack of these for resale on ebay and the like. I think that very well could be true not because their is anything wrong with the invention but rather because their is something wrong with a good proportion of the people buying it.

Same thing happened with turn key hydroponics systems and the same thing is happening right now with AP systems to which "all you have to add is fish".

I imagine they are still euphoric at the moment with preorder sales and donations up to $2.5mil this morning.

Pretty soon the hangover is going to set in because managing this "success" is going to be a colossal task. Imagine if Joel had launched an AP system kit that had this level of success. First there are all the manufacturing hassles but can you imagine dealing with the customers and managing their expectations of fish and veg in their backyards. Just imagine 6000 brand new APers coming here I guess for advice on how to cycle their system for the first time.

I imagine the level of expertise required to look after bees is similar to fish. Actually the more order they get now the harder things are going to be for them. What could save their bacon though is that there is a good chance that sellers of queens and nucs wont have the stock to allow them to get their hives started.

$3 Mill now
Big difference making and selling 100 units to 5000 x all by Dec 2015 (talking full setups so could be way more clients)
Freight, returns, warranty etc etc
just managing 5000 customers is a big task, let alone ongoing support for complex business of "Bee Farmin" which many will expect they have purchased too.

First thing i would do stuart if i were them is hire a business manager who has experience in manufacturing.

it shoulldnt be too hard to manage this start up business as long as they are smart enough to not attempt it themselves - unless either has run a big business and already knows....