Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Having never kept bees, I find this facinating. It might only streamline one aspect of beekeeping, but it is one less thing to have to do.

That conveniance thing is rather large though. The eleimination of almost all the harvesting labour is a huge selling point.

You need to compare apples with apples. Cost of langstroth or similar hive $500, plus the centrifuge $330 plus all the labour to crack the hive, de-bee the frames, reassemble the hive, de-cap the frames, centrifuge the frames, filter the honey, re-crack the hive and finally re-assemble the hive.

The commercial guys will have to work this one out though....

Kitting out all your hives with these will potentially cost more than buying a full on extractor and setting up a dedicated honey house. Since commercial bee keepers have already made this investment there is less incentive for them to invest in these new frames.

Plus I suspect that it won't be possible to to really get the benefits of the flow frames by just having some of your hives with them and some without. Micheal Bush has been saying that this is such a revolution in bee keeping equipment that they have to learn how to manage the hives in a totally different way. Much like bee keepers did when they changed from Skeps to Langstroths.

What it will come down to is what are the labour savings and what are the productivity gains? The answer to those two questions will answer whether its worth the extra or not

I predict urban burglars who take a jar along with them. Not sure about the rural equivalent, maybe a ute with an IBC on the back.

mmm break into someones backyard with a jar and wait half an hour or an hour for a jar of honey.

better rates on the dole lol.

Some people who are unemployed won't pick the apples off the tree outside their house.

I met a professional beekeeper once who first got interested in it when he'd be out hunting and raid other people's beehives for a snack. If it had been on tap I wonder if he'd have still done it. Maybe it wouldn't have been enough of a challenge.

My wife and I have been talking about beekeeping for the past few years, but gathering the honey looked tedious. I was planning on keeping a hive anyway, just for pollination and let the bees have their honey. But now I'm US$600 poorer, and that campaign is that much closer to $6M.

Up to $8mil now.

Haven't been keeping track lately but they have just extended the campaign.

What? Bastards....

I looked yesterday and there was 4 days to go, I figured my guess of 8.6 million was going to be pretty damn close to the money, but now they have extended it.....

Relocated my beehives at the weekend. Copped a few stings - hardly unusual - the unusual part was the relatively serious reaction I had to them. I hope I haven't become hypersensitive. Might be a bit more interested in a flow hive now to hopefully reduce the number of stings I get.

Dazed, what you you consider hypersensitive? Just curious, because I'm probably that. I swell up a lot in the area stung, usually up to the next joint. I'm usually fine after a Benadryl.

Coach the only sting I get with my Honey is at the cash registrar

Nothing too bad so far. I was closing up a hive during the night and a bee crawled into my boot and stung near my ankle. For the next few days every time I stood up or stopped moving my leg for even 2 seconds it hurt like hell until I'd taken a few steps (after that it kept hurting but not as much). That could have been the location (I find toes and ankles can hurt a bit more - blood flow thing I guess) or the fact that the boot well and truly squeezed all the venom into me, but what I didn't even realise at the time was that two minor stings I got had caused impressive rashes. One covered most of an arm. The other half of my torso. Symptoms didn't ease off at all until a few days later when I took antihistamine.

Apparently some long-time bee keepers can suddenly become so allergic that they need to start carrying an epi-pen with them. Obviously my recent reaction wasn't that bad (yet?). I hope this was just a one-off thing but that's probably being too optimistic.

I'd go to the DR. to get some advice.