Flow Hive's SuperLifter with Creator Cedar Anderson (326)

326 - FlowHive's SuperLifter with Creator Cedar Anderson

Bob Nelson: Hello, everybody. My name is Bob Nelson. I'm here on Kent Island on Maryland's beautiful Eastern Shore. I'm going into my third year of beekeeping. I'd like to say a special shout out to all my friends at the Wye River Beekeepers Club and the Upper Eastern Shore Beekeepers Club. Welcome to the BeekeepingToday Podcast.

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast, presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com. Thanks a lot, Bob Nelson out there in Maryland on an island that I can't remember right off the top of my head. Thank you for that great opening.

Becky: Bob has been a beekeeper for three years. He belongs to two beekeeping clubs. Now he's done one introduction to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Jeff: That is what I call a successful beekeeper.

Becky: He just check off the boxes. He is doing it right. Thank you, Bob. We appreciate it.

Jeff: Becky, it's the end of March, flowers are up, the crocuses are croaking and-- No, wait, the crocuses are flowering.

Becky: Doing the opposite of croaking.

Jeff: Yes, and the bees are starting to get their first pollen. That's pretty important time of year, isn't it?

Becky: Oh, yes. It means a lot to those of us, and there are a lot of beekeepers who are like, "What do you mean? I've been seeing pollen for weeks and weeks." Oh, if you go for a long time without seeing your bees bring in pollen, it's just such a welcome sight. It just means so much that they're able to go out there and forage and bring home some really good protein.

Jeff: Apologies, or as you mentioned, that many beekeepers across the southern tier states in the United States, California and such, they've been bringing in pollen for, I don't know, since February or longer, but it's slowly creeping north. It's fun to see as it starts to happen in your locale that the bees are starting to work, they're starting to bring in pollen, and when they're bringing in pollen, they're starting to brood up and that's an important time of year.

Becky: I hear Texas laughing at us right now. I think the whole state, every beekeeper in Texas, they're just laughing at us. We know you're there. We know.

Jeff: I'm glad that they start earlier than we do because then they can produce the packages that we can order in April and then get in April.

Becky: You're saying California's laughing at us too? You're right. California, they're laughing at our deep appreciation for pollen.

Jeff: That's right. Besides the pollen, it's March, many beekeepers, if you're a first-year beekeeper or a second-year beekeeper, even if you're getting packages or nucs, it's a little early yet if you're in the northern tier states to count on those, but if you have overwintered bees, what should they be looking at right now?

Becky: Oh, that's such a good question. It's really important that your bees have a protein substitute, a pollen substitute right now. Because if your bees are not consistently bringing in pollen, you don't want their brood production hampered in any way. We do supplement with a pollen substitute, a pollen patty. We think that that's a really good supplemental food to have on your bees right now.

Also, what about space? Sometimes you get great temperatures in March in Minnesota, and we're able to clean off the bottom board, maybe take off equipment if we need to, or maybe put empty equipment on top of the bees so they can move into it. What about you? Are you doing the same thing with space?

Jeff: This time of year, I'm looking at, if I need to, I'll reverse the supers because I double-deep my colonies through the winter. Most of them are in the upper box. If they're still down the lower box, then I don't reverse them. I'm really careful all the time of the brood pattern.

I don't want to split the brood if they're across boxes. I just leave them be, if they're across the boxes. I did want to ask you regarding the pollen patties, are you open feed of pollen substitute or not open feed of pollen substitute beekeeper?

Becky: Are you meaning put out pollen outside of the hive?

Jeff: Yes, like a can of pollen substitute.

Becky: Definitely an in-hive pollen substitute beekeeper. I think it's something that a lot of commercial beekeepers will do, and some people with smaller operations will do it too, but I'm in there anyway checking them. That's when I'll put that pollen substitute right in the middle of the brood nest. What about you?

Jeff: I've gone both ways on the feeding pollen substitute here in the Pacific Northwest. I've tried it, but it rains enough that I just don't like it because it gets wet or it gets-- Then you got to deal with all that and I end up losing more. In the last several years, I've just kept with pollen patties and throwing them in, and they stop working on them when there's enough pollen outside.

Becky: We get snow all the way into April. That would really, I guess, hamper open feeding of pollen. It's not something I've even given a thought about.

Jeff: I'll admit, it is fun to just sit within range and watch them sit there and collect and take off. There's something calming about that. Becky, today's guest is a return guest from Flow Hive, Cedar Anderson.

Becky: It's the third Flow Hive episode, but the second episode for Cedar.

Jeff: I'm looking forward to talking to him. They're rolling out some new somethings and I'm not quite sure what they're-- To be quite honest, before we talk to him, we don't know what they're going to talk about. This ought to be interesting.

Becky: I bet it'll be a surprise, a good surprise.

Jeff: I see Cedar is out there in the green room. Let's hear from our sponsors and we'll be right back.

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Jeff: Hey, thanks a lot to all of our sponsors who make this show possible. Hey, everybody, welcome back. Sitting across this great big intercontinental Beekeeping Today Podcast table is Cedar Anderson of Flow Hive. Cedar, welcome back to the show.

Cedar Anderson: Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Becky: Welcome, Cedar. It's so nice to meet you.

Cedar: Thanks, Becky.

Jeff: This is the second time you've been on the show. We're going have to start handing out badges for people who've been back several times, and they can put them on like beekeeping [crosstalk]

Becky: I'm telling you beekeeping jackets maybe.

Cedar: Excellent. [crosstalk]

Jeff: Oh, you know what'd be cool, we could do temporary tattoos, and then you could just put it-- Then it would eventually come off. Anyways.

Becky: We could actually do real tattoos.

Cedar: Oh, that's branding. If you build your smoker to have your actual branding in it, it gets really hot and it brands people by itself.

Becky: Oh.

Cedar: I've heard that happening today somebody got a nice Dadant brand from their smoker.

Jeff: Backwards.

Becky: Oh, wow.

Jeff: There's possibilities. We'd have to think of that, Cedar. Folks, sorry about a little side trip there.

Becky: Did we get off track?

Jeff: Just slightly. It's springtime, it's okay. Cedar, we've had your dad on the show and we've had you on the show talking about Flow Hive and the Flow Hive process and the Flow Hive supers. We'll have those links in the show notes. For those listeners who are new and have not heard of you, can you give us just a quick thumbnail background of Flow Hive and the Flow Hive system?

Cedar: For those that don't know the story, my dad and I wilded away in the shed here in Australia and we're working on a new way to harvest the honey directly from the hive because I'd been harvesting in the conventional way, spinning out all the honey in the centrifuge, selling the honey to the local shops like many of us have done for a long time.

From that space, I thought, "Hang on. This is just a ridiculous amount of work. The bees aren't loving it either. Can't we just tap the honey straight out of the hive, let the bees be and do it in a much easier and gentle way?" That idea sparked a decade-long journey and eventually in 2015 we had our product on the market on crowdfunding. It went totally ballistic, broke crowdfunding records, broke the internet and raised something like $12.2 million.

That was a big deal because crowdfunding wasn't really taking off like that, especially not for more agricultural things. It was more a place for widgets and gizmos that really went well in crowdfunding. It caused a big stir. Apologies to all of those beekeepers out there who got hounded a million times by everyone about our inventions.

Becky: Oh my God. Thank you for apologizing. I was at the end of that, Cedar.

Cedar: 10 years later, almost.

Becky: You've really moved the company from not a beekeeping equipment company, but you do an awful lot of education. Don't you?

Cedar: Yes. That was an interesting thing really early on. We invented the flow high of thinking we were making something for beekeepers, and we realized within that first few months that, wow, we are inspiring a new wave of beekeepers because the stats were showing about half of our customers were brand new to beekeeping. From that, we realized that we needed to educate.

Straight away we started making lots of video content, lots of online videos showing you how you do the basics on our YouTube channel and on our Facebook page and so on. Since then we've really accelerated the education side of the company as well.

Becky: I believe the last time you were on the show you talked about how it wasn't just Flow Hive version 1, but you are continually improving the Flow Hive. Can you give us an update as far as the Flow Hive, and if somebody is buying it right now, what the key points are that they're going to enjoy like those windows?

Cedar: Absolutely. All the way along, of course, being the inventor type, we're looking to solve problems and looking to improve in amongst all of the running of a business and learning about all that. It's been great to be getting back into the workshop and getting more and more time to invent things and solve problems. Along the way, of course, have been improving the Flow Hive product by adding more features that make it just a bit easier for the beekeeper and more interesting as well.

We've included more windows on our Flow Hive too, so you can look into the hive and really check what's going on from the outside. Now, that might sound not that interesting to a conventional beekeeper, but the funny thing is when you give somebody a box with windows on it who are used to just hefting a hive to feel the weight, they all of a sudden go, "Hey. That's actually really useful," because you can get a lot of insights by just opening those windows and having looked.

For a start, you can see how many bees are in there. Even if you've got a big bee bearding at the front, you can see whether the insides chakras as well. Are they bearding just because they're really hot or are they bearding because they're actually overcrowded and so on? Then you can see the nectar being put in the cells which gives you an idea of the honey flow.

You can even see the cross-section of the cells being filled and the bees depositing nectar with their tongue. You go an afternoon you can see all the little drops of nectar they've been collecting and starting to de-water. It gives you this extra, I guess, insight into what's going on in your colony, which is pretty cool.

We've also included a nice screen bottom board with a tray that comes out which is super useful for catching hive beetles if you have those in your area, or perhaps you are using it for monitoring mite drop. It's just a useful pest management tray for all sorts of things.

Then we've got ventilation control as well, which is neat because you might like to really open up ventilation in those really hot times. We've built stand into the actual base, which is a new thing to do. Often stands aren't part of the baseboard, but we decided to build it right in and then have legs that you can level just by adjusting each corner.

On that leg, we also put ant guards because it can get a bit annoying. You are opening these beautiful windows and ants have moved behind because it's been a bit wet, and they've come up out of the ground. That just adds a little barrier for the ants to get up. All of these little things we're just including and improving along the way to make the beekeeping experience, I guess more enjoyable and more interesting for the beekeepers

Becky: Cedar, I have to ask. Those windows, do you have to maintain them and and scrape them sometimes to clean them?

Cedar: No. That's an interesting point. You would think so. Occasionally you get a colony who will connect their wax to the window but not usually. Usually, they just stay clear. In fact, I've never cleaned one in my life.

Becky: That's amazing. It's like an observation hive basically, but you're observing the actual hive.

Cedar: Yes. We've got windows on both sides and then at the rear as well with that cross section of the axle cells that the bees are filling.

Jeff: Are the windows on the side of the frame or is it where the in bars are or both?

Cedar: Both. You've got both sides so you can see that last frame being filled on the outer, which is useful because, by that point they've usually stored a fair bit of honey by the time they've gotten out to there, assuming they haven't got hungry and eaten the middle out above the brood nest, which happens. If you're watching them carefully and you watch them often, you can quite easily learn where they are in the cycle of filling up the frames and then know when it's time to harvest.

Jeff: Very good. Is that on the deeps and on the honey supers or is that the windows?

Cedar: Yes. You've also got the rearview, which is the side you're harvesting from, which the end of the frame terminates with a clear piece that allows you to see the very last cell lines that they're filling. That's really neat because you can see when a frame might be full well ahead of the others and actually start harvesting well before they're filled up, the honey super.

Which is an advantage because as a conventional beekeeper, you're often waiting for not only all the frames to be full in a box to bother going to take that hard part and take that frame back to the extracting room. You're also waiting for the rest of the hives in the row to fill up so you can batch-process them all and make what is quite a long process, more efficient by doing it in a batch.

The Flow Hive opens up a different way to think about it, I guess, where you can not only harvest that hive easily when it's full, but you can harvest that frame easily when it's full. You can start harvesting well before they finish filling out the box because you can look down that cross-section view and see when the bees are actually putting their capping on, which is neat.

One side benefit that we really didn't expect was they will have different flavors of honey in different frames. Of course, in conventional beekeeping, you see that all the time. You're on the extracting bench, you're cutting the capping off, you're tasting all the capping and you're going, "Oh, that's a different flavor to that one. Isn't that cool?" It all gets mixed together into one thing we call honey.

I think it's even neater and people really love this aspect is to get that honey from that frame into a single jar, or it might be multiple jars, but you're isolating that flavor compared to the flavor in the next frame. Then you get this beautiful thing where you've got all these different colors and flavors all from one hive.

Then once you've harvested a couple of those frames, what the bees are collecting now, they'll fill up and then you get this checkerboarding of the season as it's progressing, all these different honey flavors even from one hive. You can bring that flavor story and the color of the honey to the table and the conversations that opens up are amazing.

Becky: If your bees are on a real serious nectar flow, you have to do an awful lot of harvesting. Right? Australia gets amazing nectar flows.

Cedar: Look, it can do, but not like here in North America where people are filling up a box in a single day. I've never seen that, but here in the springtime, we can fill a box in a week or two. Then harvest it all and then they're full again. Harvest it all, then they're full again.

It's really exciting when it happens, but quite often around here where I live, it's coming in dribs and drabs and you're waiting and wishing there was more need to come in.

Jeff: Beekeeping is the same everywhere, seems. Earlier you mentioned varroa in connection with the bottom screen board and we know that varroa are relatively new in Australia. Are they impacting your region of Australia yet?

Cedar: Varroa is now endemic, unfortunately. We joined the rest of the world, the golden days of no varroa are over and that is sad. There was a red hot crack here to try and eradicate it but that started way too late in the piece. Varroa got away and while it's not impacting exactly where I live now and we still don't have varroa in our hives, in our state, there are sadly losses happening from varroa.

It said that the first few years of the varroa incursion are the most devastating. It's a bit of doom and gloom, but I guess we joined the rest of the world in their varroa management and we've got a lot to learn from you guys and we've got a lot to learn from the Kiwis in New Zealand and so on about how to manage varroa, and I guess a lot of inspiration on what we can do to help.

Jeff: I was thinking if you're not already doing this, it would be good that you-- Because one of my pet peeves these days with managing varroa and the hive equipment is that the hives are not manufactured with maybe an easy access port for an OAV oxalic acid vaporizer entry port. You're sitting there with your quarter inch drill or five inch or four millimeter drill bit and drilling a hole so that you can plug your vaporizer in. On the Flow Hives, are you taking into account the varroa at all besides the screen bottom board?

Cedar: We would certainly love to build into the hive anything that makes it easier to not only beekeep but manage varroa, which I understand becomes a large part of beekeeping when you have those mites in your area. The answer is yes, and we are all ears for any insights or anything that might be able to help.

Jeff: Thanks, Cedar. Let's take a quick break and hear from one of our sponsors and we'll be right back with Cedar Anderson from Flow Hive.

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[Music]

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[00:25:01] Becky: Welcome back everybody. Now we've officially talked about varroa, so we can cross that off the list. We don't have to revisit it anymore.

Cedar: We've gone down that hole.

Becky: We've gone down that hole. I think we've got something a little bit more exciting to talk about. Cedar, you've got exciting news for Flow Hive. Can you share what you've been up to?

Cedar: Yes. Having, I guess, a global community of beekeepers around the world, we also get a lot of requests. One of the biggest issues people are having is actually lifting the heavy boxes of honey off their hives so they can look after their bees and do their brood inspections. We put our minds to that tasks. Going back now for at least seven years, my dad and I have been tinkering away and we've gone through all sorts of ideas in order to solve that problem from boxes, that tip on their side and the frames come out sideways.

From filing cabinet designs, from with and wonderful contraptions that hold the super boxes up in the air so the lower one can drop away, all sorts of, I guess, ideas to all achieve the same thing, which is how do we access that food box at the bottom in a nice and easy way. We've finally come up with a super versatile solution that fits in a bag you can hang on your shoulder and you can walk up to any hive, be it a Langstroth hive or a Flow Hive, connect it up and in 10 seconds open it up like a box in your beekeeping.

That has a lot of thought although it looks like a very simple solution now. We went through so many iterations and so much thought and one of the great things that it does for you is while you're setting up the stand that the box actually rolls over onto, it also cracks the propolis and wax at the bees are joining the boxes together with.

No more chiseling the hives apart either.

In that situation where you haven't checked a hive in a long time and the frames are stuck to the queen excluder and they come up, the boxes sit that perfect, like one inch apart for you just to knock those frames down and then the box rolls over again. We've been using variations of this invention for a long time now and it's been extremely hard to get on the weekly beekeeping teaching we do and do it the old way when we know we've got this new way just sitting over there. So happy to finally have it out in the world.

Becky: Wait. I lift boxes so that I don't have to go to the gym. Are you going to take that away from me?

Cedar: Yes. You're going to get awfully weak now. You're going to have to go to the gym.

Becky: This is a game changer. I know a lot of beekeepers who their backs have not progressed as they would like in their keeping of bees. I'm guessing this is going to really save some people's backs.

Cedar: It's the idea. Even my father, he hurt his back recently and it's like, "Oh, it's such a shame." You actually get very strong men with serious back problems because they're lifting boxes every day and their boxes can be really heavy. I guess it's that repetitive action. What we've done in a way we've connected to the hive and allowing to roll it over onto the stand less than halves that weight.

Just makes it an easy controlled process so that not only when you open it, but when you put it back, you can put it back really gently and slowly and close the gap between the boxes as slow as you like. You can spend five minutes brushing bees out of the gap as it closes if you want to. That saves that what was an awkward moment where you've got your heavy box, it might be a 10-frame deep full of honey and you're waddling up to the hive, you're trying to hold the weight close to you.

Because with that weight you can't really hold it out wide and then you've got to drop it onto the hive and whatever bees are there, they're there. There's nothing you can do about it. One of the things that people that have seen this already are loving is that little bit of control. You get to just gently place it right back on in the right spot.

Jeff: Being an audio only podcast, and I'm trying to envision what you're doing and if we had a video, of course it would be a lot easier to explain. Can you describe what this-- First of all, what do you call it? Then can you describe it?

Cedar: The invention is called our Superlifter. It's a bit of funny.

Becky: I knew you'd come up with something good. [Laughs]

Jeff: I like it.

Cedar: Our Superlifter fits in a bag a bit like a camera tripod. Imagine a camera tripod, a nice professional one. It's got a little bit of weight to it, but not too much. It goes in a bag that fits over your shoulder. You can then walk up to your home, you take it out of the bag, and there's some handle grips. You grab these grips and you lift it up, and it unfolds like a little transformer, if you like, and sets itself up in the perfect position to latch right onto your load-point screws on your hive.

The only modification you need to make to your hive is install a couple of load-point screws, which are just heavier points to latch onto. We wanted to make minimal modifications to the hives and not build expensive filing cabinet systems into every single hive. We wanted to make one widget that you could do multiple hives within it. It'd just be more efficient for the beekeeper.

You've got this thing, you attach onto your load-point screws, and then you've got two upper brackets to attach onto the next box up. Now, as you then lift and set up your stand, leverage cracks the boxes apart. That work of chiseling is done without you even thinking about it. Then you're free because the box is now separated, to roll the box over a bit like opening a box, I guess.

We've also built handles that can to attach those boxes if you wanted even a lighter lifting. It gives you even more leverage if you want to connect handles. That's especially useful if you're doing two deep boxes with a gabled roof on top that might be full of honey as well. The whole thing's getting really heavy but with those handle attachments, you can lift it over quite easily. Rest on the stand, and you can start your beekeeping.

Jeff: How many Supers at one time can you lift up?

Cedar: Two deeps.

Becky: At one time.

Jeff: In North America, most beekeepers are running two deeps or one deep and one medium, or western or medium. This would go above the brood box so that you have access to the brood box. That's the purpose of this. You could lift up two of those mediums or three of the mediums?

Cedar: Yes, absolutely. With different configurations, it's just about the spacing between those load-point screws we talked about earlier. As long as you got that spacing right, it will then lift and separate at that point, allowing you to roll the top boxes over. Now, often they're so stuck together with proper lifting so you can just roll them over, but we really recommend connecting those boxes together.

Obviously, if you're tipping a pile of boxes over you, you don't want them coming apart. We also have those nice little toggle latches that you can buy in the hardware store, but we've made some really nice little fancy ones you can use to connect your upper boxes together if you're rolling over or tipping over more than one. Once you set up, which is quite easy, you're just putting a few screws in your hives.

Once you set up, there becomes this piece of inspiration that wasn't there before, where you go, "I might just have a look and see what's going on in the hive." When before, there is a bit of a barrier to entry where you're like that sinking feeling of, "I've got to lift those boxes off." That's what I'm noticing is you have this tool and the inspiration to get in there and do some beekeeping becomes much higher.

Becky: I remember in the last episode you recorded with the podcast, you were talking a little bit about accessibility because the ability to extract from the hive helps some people not lift boxes. You were thinking about accessibility then it seemed like. It's really exciting because I think this is a game changer for so many people who have trouble lifting.

Cedar: It certainly seems that way. My nephew traveled around America and actually had the opportunity to show this invention off to some of the beekeepers we were filming. Some people were pretty excited to say the least.

Becky: There are a lot of veterans groups out there I know who focus on accessibility, so they're going to be excited to learn about this.

Jeff: To be clear, this can work with any Langstroth hive, not just a Flow Hive system, but it could work with any Langstroth hive?

Cedar: Yes, correct. We've designed it to work with any Langstroth hive, and it's just a matter of installing these load-point screws, which are basically just a heavy screw with a double head. It gives you a latching point, and then you're ready to go. In a deep box, they will go central in the box on the end and that is all set up. If you do that on all your boxes, they're all ready to go.

If you're mixing in ideas and mediums, then the spacing gets a little bit different, but it's still achievable. We've made it so you can open either side of the hive. Let's say you had your hive facing a fence and there wasn't really enough room for you to set up and set up your little stand, which is the Superlifter, and roll the hive over in that direction, and you could roll it the other way. It's quite versatile with different people's setups.

It's about, I guess, following our user guides in terms of where you install those load-point screws and making sure they're the right distance apart. That's all you need to do. The rest is well, let's say. Because it's a new invention, I wouldn't say that it's particularly intuitive straight up. After somebody's used it for the first time or 10 minutes and they've got it. That's what we're finding.

At first people are like, "What is this thing? How do I what? Oh, I get it." Then I showed a new beekeeper here, once in five minutes, and he proceeded to keep going down the row, opened 40 hives, and said, "Yes, awesome. That made the hives easier." People can learn very quickly how to use it. However, I do recommend watching our how-to videos multiple times because that first time you do it, it's not necessarily intuitive how you connect it to your hive.

Becky: Cedar, are you also selling a Flow Hive system that already has those load-points installed?

Cedar: Those load-point screws just come with a lifter. It comes with a little bag of them that you can attach to your hive. It's quite easy. It's as easy as putting in a screw and away you go. With the Flow Hive, all you're doing is backing out one of the screws you put in already and swapping it for this one.

You can go ahead and do that if you're lifting to the harvest testing side, or you can do it on the entrance side, depending on how you are set up. You can go ahead and do that to all of your hives so you're set up and ready to go when it's time to do your breed inspections.

Jeff: That sounds really exciting because I know the older I get, the less I really want to lift, both just from a back standpoint and just from a capacity size. That's why I'm doing 8-frame now as opposed to 10-frame. I'm not tough like Becky who enjoys her 10-frame box.

Becky: I don't like the gym. It keeps me out of the gym.

Cedar: It is the single point that retired beekeepers is flipping boxes. That's what we hear again and again. We're trying to tackle that point, make it easier, and take away that point of friction that makes people give up a decade too soon.

Jeff: That's very good. Also it makes the beekeeping, as we were talking just moments ago, more accessible to more beekeepers without having to lift those boxes.

Cedar: Absolutely. One of the people we visited was a quad amputee, and her young son, he must be about 10, was helping her with this device. It was just a beautiful and quite a touching thing to watch the footage of her being able to do her breeding sections.

Jeff: Where can listeners find out more information about your Superlifter?

Cedar: Jump on honeyflow.com, and we will have a lot of information for you. A lot of videos for you. I've been working hard to make all of the educational content that goes along with it, and also just a lot of videos that will quickly show you how these things work. Once you see it, you'll get it and go, "Ah, that's easy. Why didn't we do that years ago?"

Becky: Good on you. You're also doing some other really good things for the world with your Billions of Blossoms program. Could you share a little bit of an update on that?

Cedar: One of the things that keeps us going as a team and as a family, I guess, is to be creative, make inventions. We're in this world of making product and making our bee hives, which is a great thing. Inspiring people to look after bees, which is a great thing. To me, I want to be in business to do more than that. What we love to do is dream up things that can help bees in the world, that can help restore habitat in the world, which helps not only our honeybees but the myriad of native bees and all species that are completely relying on the shrinking habitat from the human incursion.

From the beginning, we've been doing things to raise funds and we've done things like get all the recycled offcuts from the Flow Hives, upcycle them into the pollinator houses to do education about native bee species, and donate 100% of those funds towards grassroots organizations who are doing great things for bees in the world. More recently, in recent years, we were looking at what we could do and we realized people were wanting a deeper educational course than just trolling through our videos on our YouTube channel and so on.

What we did is we put together a program called the beekeeper.org and invited expert beekeepers from all over the world to help make content for that. We've got now a massive library of content made to take you from square one, knowing nothing about beekeepers all the way through to even a deep scientific knowledge in beekeeping.

It's pretty cool because there's such a diversity of amazing experts who've contributed to that. We also made an amazing fundraiser. The idea is we're raising funds for habitat, for bees, for everything that needs habitat. We've planted now over 1.5 million trees in high-quality ecosystems that were partnered with organizations that are doing that work to create high-quality ecosystems for habitat, for really restoring what Dave Foreman says we need to do, which is re-wilding our world.

We're pretty excited to say we are creating literally billions of blossoms for bees, be it European honey, be it on native bee species to forage on. It's an exciting space to be able to contribute to.

Becky: That's excellent. I'm looking at your experts and you've got some excellent experts as far as on the beekeeper.org

Cedar: That one's free to try if anyone's interested, just to have a look at it and also I had said, an amazing fundraiser.

Jeff: Awesome. That's a great program and you've done a lot for not only beekeepers themselves, but with the Flow Hive and helping people get into beekeeping. You've made your strides and what you're working on, education and now the billions of blossoms. You're just returning back to the beekeepers and community at large. I applaud that to you and your dad and all your team that works with you.

Cedar: Thanks, Jeff.

Becky: I'm really looking forward to seeing the impact of your Superlifter and see just how many lives you're going to change with it.

Cedar: It really is for the beekeepers, this invention. It'd be really interesting. By the time this podcast's out, we'll know what the world thinks of it.

Jeff: It'll be up and running when the show airs. We look forward to having you back and you can give us an update on how it's going and what else you've created for beekeepers. I expect there'll be more on the drawing board that you'll be able to talk about.

Cedar: It's been fantastic to be able to get back to the workshop and work on solving problems and creatively coming up with ideas that can help beekeepers and beyond. I guess that's my happy place and thanks to all of you who have jumped in and supported us with our inventions so far.

Jeff: Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Cedar.

Becky: Thank you, Cedar.

Cedar: Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, Becky.

Jeff: I just really enjoy talking to Cedar and the perspective of his can-do going to make it better and help beekeepers. That's fun and it's contagious.

Becky: It's nice to see somebody who's been able to really follow a dream and not just create one new invention, but create a whole body of work that's, again, supporting the beekeeping industry and beekeepers. That was a fun conversation.

Jeff: What they've done in developing the Flow Hive and making beekeeping more popular is very good. What they're doing with providing more education for beekeepers is also very critical. As they've talked about in earlier episodes, that they wanted to make sure that beekeepers understood. You still have to manage the bees even though they make harvesting the honey a little bit different and a little bit easier.

Becky: You have to manage them, but now you don't have to really lift them. This is such a frameshift.

Jeff: No pun intended, is it?

Becky: Oh no, I totally know that.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcast or wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank Betterbee and our regular longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you the Beekeeping Today Podcast listener for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments on our website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:46:35] [END OF AUDIO]