Ramble On

[creese]

[deactivated-blog]

drawer full of Megachilids by Ellen Bulger on Flickr.

[itscolossal]

WATCH: Honey on Tap: A New Beehive that Automatically Extracts Honey without Disturbing Bees [video]

[officialabortionist]

WITHOU T DISTURBING THE BEES THAT IS FANTASTIC BEES ARE GREAT

[kedreeva]

You don’t understand how fabulous this is!!

This hive structure, if it works like the descriptions imply, would make beehives something super affordable, that just about anyone could install near their home and maintain. AND it would reduce the cost of harvesting honey by more than just the money-

A typical honey harvesting device costs $200-300, plus the time it takes to use to harvest. For a Langstroth hive, you have to suit up (gear which can be pricey), remove the comb (which is highly disturbing to the bees), install said comb in the extractor (scraping all the caps off the comb first), spin out the honey, RE-open the hive (after suiting up and again disturbing the bees), and put the comb back.

If you use a method that doesn’t require an extractor, you usually end up destroying the comb, which is damaging to the hive and intensively laborious for your bees because they have to completely remake the combs from scratch.

What this looks like is that you probably wouldn’t even need to suit up any time you wanted to harvest honey (though you would still need the equipment for installation of the colony and for inspections, etc, or if you’re still getting used to the colony). Removing the viewing window on a hive doesn’t disturb the bees at all (ours hardly even notice us), and the shift in the comb to start extraction is unlikely to cause enough disturbance to merit a response.

The bees get to keep/recycle all the materials they created (aside from the honey), and you get fresh, almost-effortless honey.

Perhaps the most important and AWESOME thing about this?? The “Flow Frames” that allow for this type of extraction can be used with pre-existing hive boxes. This means that folks who already own bees that are being kept in most kinds of hives, especailly the standard Langstroth hive boxes, can replace their old frames with Flow frames without having to start from scratch.

The Indiegogo campaign to start production on these launches in just a few hours (11AM AU EST, Feb. 23rd, 2015), so if you want to help these folks revolutionize bee-keeping, I would suggest signing up for their mailing list!

[crystalinecoyote]

ok just checked out their indiegogo campaign and they surpassed their goal by 3,089% this makes me so happy

[generalised-fear]

[mistymorningme]

Early Snow by tomkellyphoto

[valscrapbook]

[2coool4schoool]

[super-tr4mp]

Koitelinkoski I by Polly Bird Balitro on Flickr.

[benngie]

Mornings on the Shuswap. 

[naturepunk]

American Kestrel, World Center for Birds of Prey. Image by NaturePunk. 

[sixpenceee]

An ice canyon in Greenland. 

[e-ngram]

[statues-and-monuments]

[uulemnts]

statues-and-monuments:

statues-and-monuments Temple of Hathor, Dendera, Egypt 2011 by andrei deev 

[bandaidpennylane]

[luvtahliahcom-blog]

FKA twigs looking beyond gorgeous performing in Sydney, Australia Feb 1st, 2015.

[boredpanda]

Fox Village In Japan Is Probably The Cutest Place On Earth

[rudolphsb9]

Shout out to the fox nomming on the other fox’s tail.

[linkkers]

Japan seems so magical

[ultrafacts]

In japan, there’s a bunny island, a cat island, a park with bowing deer, now THIS

[valscrapbook]