Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about a very exciting new venture in my electorate and congratulate the innovative local inventors. North Coast beekeepers Stuart and Cedar Anderson are set to take the honey world by storm after designing a revolutionary new honey collection system. The father and son inventors from The Channon came up with a system known as the Flow Hive, which does away with traditional bee smoking and instead allows honey to flow directly from the hive into containers without opening the hive or disturbing the bees. It is a great idea and it is already being dubbed the most important change in honey collection in 150 years and it is gathering a staggering amount of support.

The new system has attracted a worldwide following and netted more than $2 million on a crowdfunding website in just a few days, even though the pair had only initially asked for $70,000. Traditional extraction of honey is very time consuming and the Flow Hive saves almost all that time involved in honey extraction process. The invention could even help save declining bee populations around the world, because beekeepers will be able to keep more bees and new people will be able to enter the market. Stuart has said the new system makes it so easy to harvest honey could attract more people—including urban and suburban dwellers—to beekeeping. Cedar is overwhelmed at the response from the crowdfunding campaign. He said: 'We have been completely blown away by the support. We hope our invention will create a new community of beekeepers around the globe keeping bees in this new, bee-friendly way.' Congratulations to Stuart and Cedar, and all the best for the future; it is a great invention. I hope they do very well.