Life On The Job


Beekeepers and Inventors: Cedar & Stu Anderson

Cedar and Stu Anderson

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
https://youtu.be/3nDuOyRgA90

 


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.

Cedar Anderson

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.

Stu and Cedar Anderson
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.

Cedar's sister Mirabai slaved away on a video:

New Invention - Flow: Honey on Tap Directly From your Beehive [2015]
https://youtu.be/0_pj4cz2VJM

 



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.

Cedar at work

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)

Links

Their company: Honeyflow
Honeyflow
Flow Hive - The world's most innovative beehive
https://youtu.be/IrDK777k1Es



How does the Flow Hive work?

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

 

YouTube: Q & A With Cedar & Stu Anderson [45 mins]
28 April 2021
https://youtu.be/g1WrGFwspiI

 

 

YouTube: Live Q an A with Cedar Anderson [1hr]
18 August 2021
https://youtu.be/YGaycU0Bt1k

 

 

YouTube: Honey Flow

https://youtu.be/WbMV9qYIXqM

 

 

Activities

Connect Three: Honey Bees

PrimaryPrimary MiddleMiddle  High SchoolSecondary

Personal and social capabilityAustralian Curriculum General Capability: Personal and social capability

LiteracyAustralian Curriculum General Capability: Literacy

CriticalAustralian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking

TeacherTeacher

Instructions for Teachers

Student Worksheet - Word Doc 1 page

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?

The Way of the Waggle Dance

Play the Panel Game - Just a Minute - with the other students who have chosen this segment.
Use the phrase: "Making honey is as easy as...."
Create a Tik Tok showing how the Honey Flow works Maths & the Honey Bee

Convert the following videos into an infographic

PrimaryThe Waggle Dance of the Honeybee

MiddleHoney bee waggle dancing

High School How Bees Use The 'Waggle Dance' To Make Honey

 

The Way of the Waggle Dance

PrimaryPrimary MiddleMiddle 

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