Not electronics related but very interesting. Honey on tap (from the hive)

[Crazy Ape]

Not into bees myself, but this struck my as truly game-changing in that field.

Honey on tap, direct from the hive, with minimal disturbance to the bees.
I'm not affiliated with these guys, just saw it posted in another forum I frequent and it struck me a brilliant Aussie invention. 

Video


They've well and truly blown the top off their crowdfunding goal, crazy!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-beehive

[mikeselectricstuff]

I'm sure it won't be long before someone hooks up an Arduino pr RasPi to one of these.

Send a Tweet, a drone goes out, harvests some honey & brings it back to you....

[T3sl4co1l]

Cool -- or rather, why hasn't this been done before?!

I wonder what downsides it may have; is there anything toxic in the plastic that's a problem for the bees or the honey?  (Easy enough to control with choice of known foodsafe plastics.  I doubt "bee-safe" plastics are as well established, but maybe that's not hard either.)

What controls whether they put honey in them, or larvae or what?  Do you ever get one filled up with the wrong thing, in part or in full?  Is that controlled by hormones?  Which could be doped in the plastic, but how long would they last?

How resilient is the plastic, since we're talking environmental exposure here -- not water and direct sunlight, and actually probably not normally freezing temperatures either (I believe hives are usually transported between growing areas anyway, so that would control the climate pretty well?).  But even the little bit of sunlight that leaks in will have its effect, plus atmospheric oxygen / ozone / NOx / etc.

So, questions that I'm sure aren't terrifically hard to answer, either with some general knowledge from an apiarist, or a few years research by those guys.  I still wonder "why"; is it just because beekeeping is such an old and small business that there's just no one thinking of these things, and that the market is so small that no one cares?  But bees pollinate almost everything, so it's no small deal, even though small compared to the entirety of agriculture and all.  Dunno.  Hope the vision works out, though.
Tim

[Crazy Ape]

I thought something along the lines of "Why didn't I think of that", it's so simple that it's elegant.

Interaction in some form with the plastic is certainly something worth considering. I'll be following this project with interest.

[SeanB]

Plastic looks like the tubes and output ( on the prototypes at least) is a mix of acrylic resin and the tubes are likely PVC. In a production I would guess PET will be both long lasting and not likely to leach, as it is a common bottle material, and is a pretty good plastic to mould as well. As to the uses the bees put the combs to ,they will use only a few as nursery places, so there you simply do not use them to harvest honey, but leave alone. the rest will be honey or pollen storage, easy enough to differentiate so you do not deprive the bees of their non food stores. You probably will be splitting this open every year or so anyway to clean it, but the stress on the bees will be a lot less as you can do it when they are dormant and less likely to suffer stress.

[Mechanical Menace]

What controls whether they put honey in them, or larvae or what? 

You have a board that separates the brood combs from the "honey section." The board has holes too small for the queen to travel through. That's just standard on modern hives tbh.

[amyk]

I'm sure it won't be long before someone hooks up an Arduino pr RasPi to one of these.

Send a Tweet, a drone goes out, harvests some honey & brings it back to you....

A drone? Very appropriate.