(playful music)
(bees buzzing)
- That's pretty full.
So, I put display frame out of the hive to put on the bench
so you can see in action
and take a closeup of how it'll work.
So now, of course you don't have to remove it out of the box
to get the honey.
We're just doing this for a demonstration.
You'd see the bees have really drawn the wax out
and completed all the cells and filled it full of honey.
There's still a few cells here that they haven't completed.
We'll take a closer look.
You can see the way they kept it beautifully.
Let's have a look.
Still some cells there that haven't been capped.
You can see here, I haven't quite finished filling the comb.
The savers and cells to blast,
so you got a really got idea of how full
and ready the honey is.
So you want it to be muchly capped for your harvest.
So there's been some questions
about whether the honey is ready
and the answer is yes, it's perfectly ready.
It's just as is in any other type of honeycomb frame.
This is the cap that the honey is perfectly ready.
So this frames come out of the hive in much the same way
as traditional honey frames
with the hook going under here.
This is the standard beehive tool.
This will unscrew in the end here
which allows us to adjust the frame
so it's really tightly up
against the other side of the box
and make sure the observation we know
that the other in stays in mind.
'Cause the cap comes out of the top,
that's where to tool goes in.
And this one at the bottom, it comes out,
this is where the tube goes in.
So I'm just gonna show up to you here.
This is the purpose of getting started,
getting honey jar jar.
So you see two slots here and the bottom one's here
is used to open the cells and hives the honey.
You can use one tool or two.
I only use two here because they work against each other
and won't tip the frame over.
So all I have to do is move this down like so
and what's happened is inside the honeycomb,
the cells have split and turned into channels
for the honey to flow down
and out of the hive.
So let's have a look at that.
Look down the honey tube.
Look at that, isn't that absolutely gorgeous?
Beautiful honey just draining down.
Wow, we get a bit close up.
Woah, guys.
(playful music)
So here to that quite quickly draining out of the frame.
Look at that honey, just pouring out.
Beautiful, fresh honey.
So you know that it's pretty much free from wax.
It just comes out pure and clean.
There's no filtering needed.
So you can see here, the dark area,
that's where the honey still draining down
and what it's like,
the honey's actually all drained down already.
So here you can see the capping hasn't actually changed.
The bees that's standing on top of this
and the honey just drains out from beneath their feet.
The capping hasn't really been disturbed at all.
Over here you can see how the channels
have formed inside the comb while we haven't capped it
we can really look at that zigzagging channels
that guide the honey down out of the hive.
Wait about 10 minutes and got that much honey already.
That 1.5 kilograms.
So we continually get the feedback from beekeepers
that it tastes like comb honey.
It tastes like when you chew on fresh honeycomb.
That we think is because the honey's out mixed up,
that it mixed to all the other frames in the hive
and the honey hasn't been spun through the air
in the centrifuge and exposed to all that oxygen.
Apparently, honey loses some of its flower flavors
from oxidization.
It has been 20 minutes
and we've got that much honey.
So, you can see it,
it's lying down here.
Look down the tube now.
(playful music)
You can see the honey's drained out
of this in-frame view now.
That looks they let draining down at the end.
So here you can see how the capping hasn't changed at all
and the bees could be standing on top of this comb surface
and highly analyze what's been going on.
There's where it haven't drawn the honeycomb cells
out this far,
you can see there is a little bit of disturbance there.
So, we initially thought,
we would have to coat the whole honeycomb matrix in wax
in order to get the bees to like it
but we didn't have to at all.
You can put this straight in, no wax coating
and the bees take to it
and build all these beautiful honeycomb on it.
In fact, we've tested using traditional wax frames
and they side by side in a box
and that build on these
and the flow frames at the same time.
It's really quite amazing.
So it doesn't really have to be either or,
you can have flow frames in the middle of your box
and then a couple of traditional wax ones on either side.
You can have the best of both worlds.
You can have a whole another box of traditional frames
and another box of flow frames.
It doesn't really matter.
It doesn't have to be one or the other.
You can see all that honey's drained out now
and the comb's going quite light.
Just love how it drips,
dripping from the ceiling.
You can watch this.
You're gonna need to leave these tools in the whole time.
Let's just open the frame,
you can take them out,
move on to the next one.
So, that's beautiful honey.
So the best time to harvest the honey
is when the bees have kept it fully
so they can be standing on the comb surface
and really won't notice much difference.
But if you harvest the honey early
and these bees down the cells,
then we've designed it so the bees won't get hurt.
We've done that, you can see here,
the fresh one that's had no wax on it yet.
You can see the space would lift
so the bees won't get a wing or leg cut.
So then refill in the honeycomb
so the bees can fill it up again
beneath that top slot.
So it's a matter of putting a tool in the top here
and turning it once again.
And that's it.
The honeycomb's now ready for the bees to fill again.
Now, another thing we've designed is that,
if you forget and you leave that up
or just put it up again,
you can't actually get the cap to go in.
So that remind you that you need
to put the comb back into the cell form position
for the bees to fill with honey.
When it's how you do it actually,
you have to close the cells again
and then
the cap will go in.
So, the honey's coming out nice and slow down
and if I'm in a hurry,
and I don't wanna wait any longer,
I can take this tube out
and we've designed a little point here.
That means when we put this cap in,
any remaining honey will drain out of the trough
and back into the hives.
I put that cap in there
and you can actually watch the bees licking up
through this little slot.
And now clean that whole trough out
just by continuing to lick the honey.
In that way, there's no honey left in the trough
going fermented or candied.
Look at that big jar of honey.
Isn't that beautiful?
Now the bees will notice all the honey's drained
from out of the cells
and they'll chew all that capping off
in a day or two,
and be ready fill it with honey again.
It's a wonderful thing.
(playful music)