[Bonus] Simon Mildren - Micro Honey Harvester

[Bonus] Short - Simon Mildren - Micro Honey Harvester

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Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast shorts, your quick dive into the latest buzz in beekeeping.

Becky Masterman: In 20 minutes or less, we'll bring you one important story, keeping you informed and up to date.

Jeff: No fluff, no fillers, just the news you need.

Becky: Brought to you by Betterbee, your partners in better beekeeping.

Jeff: Hey, everybody, welcome to today's Beekeeping Today Podcast shorts. We're excited to have Simon Mildren, founder and CEO of HiveKeepers, an Australian ag tech company revolutionizing the beekeeping industry. Simon is a firefighter-turned-beekeeper and has been instrumental in developing innovative solutions for both hobbyists and small commercial beekeepers. In this bonus episode, we'll be discussing HiveKeepers' latest innovation, the Micro Honey Harvester. Simon, welcome to the Beekeeping Today Podcast short.

Simon Mildren: Great to be here. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, Becky. It's a pleasure to have this opportunity with you and your listeners. Thanks.

Becky: We're so excited to hear what you have to say here, Simon. Thanks for being here.

Jeff: Simon, this is a really interesting product that caught Becky and I. It sounds very exciting. Why don't you describe to us what the Micro Harvester is?

Simon: Yes. Sure thing. It started a few years ago with some of the concerns and issues around traditional harvesting methods for the small-scale hobby beekeeper, of which I have been one now for 15 years or more perhaps. We were looking to overcome some of the really simple problems that come with honey harvesting for that group of people. The honey harvester came from that. We now have it what is a small bench-top device, which is just like a normal extractor that it rotates and spins out honey. It's nice, small, compact and easy.

When you match that up, Jeff, with our frames, our honey harvesting frame, there's small cassettes there. Those small cassettes can be quickly and easily removed. When we do that, they come apart and are quickly and easily harvested, and we're talking within 20 seconds as opposed to a long, drawn-out setup that would otherwise normally take place for traditional honey harvesting.

Becky: For beekeepers who might have this reference, but the cassettes actually look like a Jenter box. They look like the boxes where you'd have a queen lay eggs into with the cells set up and the nice square cassettes. Very cool.

Jeff: Those cells, those squares, there's a line of what, how many across the top and across the bottom? There's five and five?

Simon: Yes. Oh, you're talking about on the-

Jeff: On the frame.

Simon: -actual frame. In the frame's [crosstalk] here, there's four across and two down. Each pair of cassettes means there's 16 halves on there. I just consider one cassette being one pair, like I'm holding up to you here, which is just two parts.

Jeff: Okay.

Becky: Nice.

Jeff: Those all fit into a standard Langstroth deep frame. You have-

Simon: Correct.

Jeff: -essentially eight cassettes. They split in half, and you have essentially 16. I can do math quickly, and as you said, 16 portions. You put two portions, two halves into the Micro Harvester?

Simon: That's right. All we will do, and I'll show you, I know the listeners don't see this, but you can speak for them as well. When we pull apart, we separate the cassette when we've got honey that's capped. As we pull that apart, and I hold up to you, you can see that the actual bottom of the cells, when you look at this cassette-

Becky: Ah, sure.

Simon: -become open. That removes the need, Jeff, for us to uncap. The cappings remain because we're actually going to remove the honey from the inside of the cassette-

Becky: Cells. Smart.

Simon: -rather than the outside of the cassette. When these two faces come back together, show you that there, so you can see. I know others can't, but you can see how those two faces come back together.

Jeff: They snap together.

Simon: Then you can't actually see through.

Becky: Wow.

Simon: That means that the bees have a really good quality honeycomb structure to work with. We still have access to that honey, but from the back of the cells when we put them in our harvester.

Becky: Easiest uncapping ever. That's just brilliant.

Simon: Becky, that comes from the fact that I must be hopeless at that. I don't know what's wrong. I've tried all the tools, I've tried all the methods, and I just found uncapping just an utter mess and completely hopeless and time-consuming. That was one of my criteria. I've got to find a way to make uncapping easier. Here we are, we removed it all together, the issue.

Becky: So cool.

Jeff: Each frame has the cassettes in it, and you could put the frames in just like a standard deep frame. You could have 8, 16, whatever. If you had a long Lang, you could have 28, 32?

Simon: Yes. You just keep going. It's just put lift out one normal frame and put one of our frames in. That's all it's meant to be. That was one of the other criteria. I want it to be really simple. Now, whilst we only have deep frames at this point in time, we have to start somewhere with our product. As soon as we get that momentum and movement forward, we will offer additional size frames, which will mean there's different quantities of cassettes there.

Jeff: Sure.

Simon: We obviously need to start at one point. We just chose the Langstroth full-depth frame to begin with.

Becky: Then you expect to put these in deep boxes above the queen excluder?

Simon: Yes. That makes sense, doesn't it? I've certainly put them in below and just kept them off to the side, away from the brood area. That can work. I've also used one of the queen cages that can sit inside the box, which normally hold the queen. Keep the queen constrained.

Becky: Oh.

Simon: Instead, I'm putting these frames in there to keep the queen separated from them. That's actually working quite well.

Becky: There's a couple of ways to do this.

Simon: There is. It's quite diverse, really.

Jeff: I hadn't thought about using one of those queen-frame cages that way.

Simon: The other way around.

Jeff: Yes.

Simon: Yes. It was actually one of the beekeepers over here that I've been doing testing with, saying, "Simon, I'm going to do that." I just went, "Eh? How come I never thought of that?" That's the thing. It's good to have a really great testing group that come up with lots of good ideas like that.

Jeff: Slow down, Jeff.

Becky: Jeff's excited, so this is a good thing. [laughs]

Jeff: This is really cool.

Simon: That's great. I love it.

Jeff: Just so many thoughts going through because this unit looks like a food processor, for lack of better term. A round container that sits on top of a table or a work bench or like you said, a countertop. You put both halves of the cassette in that, and it spins it basically like a regular extractor, a radial extractor.

Simon: That's right.

Jeff: I'm thinking right away is if you were a chef or if you worked in a restaurant, and you really wanted to wow your customers and say, "Hey, I've got the freshest product here." You could extract that tableside or in a place that people could watch it at least and understand what's happening.

Simon: We've had a lot of people ask us about that. We've had a lot of people ask us about how it would go if they were to take their honey to their normal markets, and they could extract honey with their harvester in front of their customers. Do you know what's just simply amazing, Jeff, is at home, you can bring a cassette inside on a Saturday night. You have a nice cheese platter, and your guests are there with you, and you can simply harvest honey in front of your guests. Something that we know that that's not practical normally.

[laughter]

They show interest in your garage the way that you've got a extraction set up for about three minutes, and then they leave it to you. This way people see it. Now, I'd love to show you a harvest if you've got a few minutes.

Becky: Absolutely.

Simon: It'll only take a few minutes.

Jeff: Yes, please do.

Simon: Do you want me to tell you about the harvester?

Becky: Yes, please do.

Simon: For those that can't see it, it's basically the size of a bucket. We designed it to be beekeeper-proof, as best as you can. We know there's nothing truly beekeeper freak out there, but we wanted an easy carry bucket. It needed to be portable. Yes, there's a small motor in there, but it needs batteries. We didn't want to have to rely on being plugged in so that you could actually take this to your bee yard and harvest while you're out there with your bees. The reason for that is to make it part of your normal inspection practice that you could actually be checking on your bees, but also harvesting a small amount of honey as you go.

Now, enough about that. I'd just love to show you. I'm going to pull the handle down. The handle out of the way. Lets us lift the lid off back to the side. Actually, I'll show you one other part here. The base comes off as well. Bit hard to do it in the middle of the air here, but I'll try my best. You've just seen how the base comes off and there's a central spindle section, which is where the cassettes are going to go. I'm going to put it back together quickly, and I'm going to then show you one of these beautiful, maybe you can describe to your listeners what I'm holding up.

Jeff: You're holding the individual frame with the eight cassettes in it.

Becky: [crosstalk] Beautiful honey.

Simon: Beautiful honey. It's stunning, isn't it? Now it's from one of my test beekeepers. I'm going to go for this one just here.

Becky: Ah, nice.

Simon: I already just loosened it ever so slightly, so I'm going to lift that one out.

Jeff: It doesn't seem to be all propolized and sticking together. That popped out of that frame cleanly.

Simon: Yes, it does. See that little-- I'm holding the tiniest little bit of propolis that sits around the side of the actual cassette between the cassette and the frame. It's very fine. People say to me, "Simon, is there spots there for hive beetle and other things to get in the way on the frame?" No. We've engineered it so well that it fits together really tight.

Now this is the bit where I get to pop it apart. The new version of these cassettes, which is not what I'm showing you here, because I haven't even got them yet. I've been waiting for this to come from the manufacturer. I have a nice little key that just pops them open and that overcomes any beeswax that's there. Otherwise, I've just popped that apart with two thumbs, probably see a little bit of honey just was there.

Becky: Very little bit of honey. The honey-- It's still in the cells.

Simon: I could hold this up.

Becky: Yes. It's looks pretty thick.

Simon: It's not coming out with some force. Now hold it up to you in a minute while I'll just get this in here. I'm just sliding these in.

Jeff: Sliding them with the open side to the outside of the extractor?

Simon: Yes. The actual cappings are facing inwards. Then, I know it's slightly out of view, but I'm just going to put the lid back on. What I've got here is you can see that the cassette is sitting in there inside, ready to go. Just slid that in. I'm going to push this button here, and it's going to spin for about 20 seconds, and you can tell your audience what it looks like.

Jeff: Spin it away.

Becky: Oh, this is fun. Oh, and there you go. The honey is starting to spin to the sides of the bucket. It's quiet.

Jeff: Yes, it's really quiet.

Simon: Very quiet, isn't it?

Becky: Simon doesn't have any honey all over his hands. It's very neat.

Jeff: It's not walking across the floor.

[laughter]

Becky: What's up with that?

Simon: It's not occupying my garage for three days in a row as I get frustrated. I'm capping and filtering and cleaning. It's just slowing down now. You can see how it's accumulated around the walls. Classic honey harvesting, it doesn't look like a lot, but one of the volume of each of those cassettes is 250 mil, which is about 170 grams. I can't help you with any other unit of measure that might be relevant for you guys, but 250 mil is a cup, isn't it?

I've just lifted the lid off, and what I really want to show you is I take out that center spindle, so they'll put that out of the way. That's pretty dry by the way. I could spin it one more time. It doesn't look like when I hold this up to you that there's much honey in there, but as you start scraping, it quickly comes together. I'm sure you're looking at that going, where's the honey? It's there.

Becky: No, I can see that honey. I know it's there. Well, if you've ever extracted in a regular extractor, you know that what's on the side of the walls. [crosstalk]

Simon: It really adds up, doesn't it, Becky?

Becky: You let it sit overnight, and it totally adds up. Yes.

Simon: The thing I wanted to point out to you, though, was what bits there are in there. As in what bits of beeswax now, I can look in there and see maybe six or seven micro, little bits of beeswax. I don't know how easy it is for you to see, but that's going on my toast. I don't think any of us here would care. It's such a small amount of beeswax. It's a ridiculous. It's just not worth worrying about. If you wanted to, you could just pick it out with a teaspoon, no problem. That's how it works.

Jeff: That's amazing. To reuse that cassette, what do you do with the actual cappings that are there?

Simon: When you put that cassette back into the frame, back in the hive, the bees will manage that within the first day. They'll remove those cappings.

Jeff: Oh, it's very quick.

Becky: They do.

Simon: They're straight onto it. They'll repurpose it. Sometimes I've seen the beeswax out the front or underneath a vented base. Generally speaking, it's quite quick repurposed inside the hive.

Jeff: There's no scraping, no digging, no fuss, no muss. Interesting.

Simon: It's just all the problems that I've had over the years, and I've just tried again and again to find the right way to do it. It's coming true here. I'm sure I've still got some improvements to make. We've been through many different iterations. We've tested a lot of different ways to do it, but we're really getting to the point now where we've taken a lot of those pain points out, and it's a good feeling. I've got to be honest.

Becky: I'm impressed. I think that this is such a great tool because if anybody's ever loaded up an extractor to bring it to a school to demonstrate or any kind of reason to share actual honey extraction, this is so neat, so clean, and so accessible. At the state fairs, you can literally have people right there and take a look at actual extraction right in front of them. I have to ask, this is a Kickstarter event?

Simon: Correct.

Becky: I think we need to get those details out because this is just happening now.

Jeff: Yes, tell us about it.

Simon: It really is. It is on Kickstarter, and people can search on kickstarter.com for Micro Honey Harvester. We can also share a link with them I guess on your podcast afterwards.

Becky: Yes, you sure can.

Jeff: We'll put it in the show notes.

Simon: I'll give you one-time reference. He's going live, maybe before this goes out live. I don't know, but Tuesday, the 25th of March, 4:00 PM in your time where you are, and 5:00 PM New York, San Francisco 2:00 PM. I've got my little stuff on the wall. We'll be going live then. If people are interested, please go across and look for this now, or look for this as soon as possible because people usually go to Kickstarter because they're looking for a special price or a good deal or something. We reward those that go there first and put their trust in us first. Please go there.

Jeff: We'll definitely get the word out. That's one of the benefits. That's why we created Beekeeping TodayPodcast shorts, was to provide this quick, timely information for our listeners. We'll turn this around. This is Monday. We'll get this out either later today or first thing in the morning so that they can be on the Kickstarter right away.

Simon: In fact, a suggestion would be hivekeepers.com is if they go there, there's a direct link to the campaign page, so that they don't have to do the searching. It might just be quicker to do it that way.

Jeff: Let's do that. We'll send them directly to your website, and then they can follow the links. They're easy to see.

Simon: That sounds perfect.

Jeff: Simon, this is great. Actually what we'll do is we'll have you back on the show later this year, and give us an update on the Kickstarter and on the product release. I can see it at a restaurant. I know I've said that before, but I can see it on at a restaurant with the chefs sitting there saying.

Simon: Jeff, if I'm honest, I see a slightly different version. I'd love to bring one that looks a little bit more fitting to their environment inside it. What a great start we've got here with what it is. Can I plant one more little idea in the back of your mind? It's a future Simon dream of where he sees this going. I like the idea of someone who doesn't even have a beehive to harvest fresh honey in their own home.

Becky: I love that.

Simon: What I mean by that is-- It really resonates. Well, doesn't it? Is someone who just loves honey and loves fresh, good quality food, and get a honey cassette from their local honey supplier, take it home, harvest that right there with their family. They don't even need to have the bees. We all love bees here. We all love spending time with them. Guess what? Not everyone does. Some people love the honey and love the produce, but they don't want to have to go through that work. Can we make this an espresso machine for honey?

Jeff: Yes.

Simon: That's the vision that I have for this.

Jeff: It's your-

Becky: One in every kitchen.

Jeff: -espresso or whatever they call it, little cups of coffee, and you just buy your frames of honey. I love it. It's a great idea, Simon.

Simon: Let's see. Oh, but we'll do one thing at a time. We've got a Kickstarter, as you've heard. We've got to bring this product to the recreational market. We'll deal with the bigger opportunities later.

Jeff: There you go. Well, thanks a lot for joining us this afternoon. We look forward to hearing from you, Simon.

Simon: Thanks very much, Becky. Thanks, Jeff.

Becky: Thanks, Simon.

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