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Maybe in wetter years, but right now I think staypuft beekeepers and vacuums are the way to go...

@newtboy. The youtube comments are interesting, one person from Arizona says that bees are just like that for him. Not much of a niche for hobby beekeepers if that's the case.

Lol..no.
CCD is barely studied in wild hives because it's not been seen in the wild in statistically meaningful numbers, and it's much more of a problem for commercial hives because they move, making them more prone to weakness and diseases, they are kept together, making them more prone to parasites like nosema and Varroa mites and disease spreading problems like the Israeli virus, and they are constantly in contact with crops sprayed with various pesticides weakening and confusing them. Wild hives don't have these extra deleterious factors, so are far less effected by CCD if at all, and are not noticeably effected by most if not all commercial or hobby beekeeping that targets human agriculture, not native flowers. I kept a hive of bees for years to pollinate my orchard, so I checked on this stuff before jumping in.

Commericalized bee operations (commercial pollinators who's byproducts are honey/bees wax/pollen/royal jelly/bee venom/and bees themselves) don't displace natives. If there were native bees pollinating the crops they are hired to come pollinate, there wouldn't be a commercial bee industry. Honey is mostly a byproduct of the pollination industry, without which America at least would starve. Native bees simply can't pollinate at the industrial scale and timetables required for your vegetables, so without commercial beekeepers we'll all have to eat more meat.

Please, if you have bees move into your property and need them gone, call a local beekeeper to come remove them. We need every healthy bee we can get right now. Don't call the exterminator, bee keepers will come remove them for free.

From my investigation, that's incorrect.
The places in China where hand pollination is used still have bees. The reason they do hand pollination is they switched to a very few varieties of apples and pears...and apple and pear trees need a DIFFERENT apple or pear tree to pollinate, so if you only have one apple variety (the norm there) it won't self pollinate, no matter how many bees there are. Also, climate change is putting the bee cycles and the tree cycles out of synch, making natural pollination even more difficult or impossible. By hand pollinating, they are able to have less than 10% 'pollination' trees to 90% 'fruiting' trees, and pollinate on the tree's cycle. THAT'S why production was better with hand pollination, not because people could do it better, but humans could target which pollen to use on which flower/tree. Also, commercial beekeepers won't 'lend' (rent) their hives out, or require high payments for them pricing most farmers out, because farmers there still use pesticides that kill bees through the pollination seasons.

Other areas that used to do hand pollination have stopped thanks to education. Now they plant more variety (so the bees/insects/birds CAN pollinate for them) and use less pesticides (that they actually didn't realize would kill bees) and are getting better yields for less money than the Chinese.

EDIT: These 'studies' always seem to ignore the incalculable cost of removing all the natural food pollinated by bees, and the collapse of many food webs caused by the loss of that food base. If people are spending cash to do the pollination work, you can be certain they'll go to great lengths to NOT share that produce with any wildlife.

Also, human hand pollination doesn't work for crops like certain grains and smaller vegetables and nuts, main human food sources. It only works for foods where a single pollinated flower will produce something worth the cost of pollination...grains simply don't, and neither do most vegetables, fruits, or nuts. Only large fruits or vegetables could use this economically. So while you're correct, it CAN be done, doing it across the board would probably quadruple the cost of average foods, if not worse.

WIKI-" If humans were to replace bees as pollinators in the United States, the annual cost would be estimated to be $90,000,000,000.[4]"

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/will-we-still-have-fruit-if-bees-die-off/

Foulbrood is not cleanable. If you get it in this hive, say goodbye to your $600, or become a bee killer. Some people think it can be disinfected with fire, but not on plastic (and I don't trust that on wood either, miss one tiny spot and lose another hive or more).
Yes, you are right, you still need to inspect the hive, meaning you have to separate it and look at individual frames. That might be harder with the special frames, you might not be able to ever remove them. I can't tell.
The brood is in the box below, and should have a queen excluder between the boxes so you never get brood in the honey frames.
No idea how well it works, but I can tell it will leave the hive messy, with raw honey covering the bottom of the hive and caps and wax split and filling the empty spaces. The bees will eventually clean it up, but it will take time.
EDIT:also, if your bees don't fill out the frames perfectly, they might not split (because two or more are connected). Then what?
You are right, just jumping into beekeeping is not good, and can hurt other people's bees (like if you get foulbrood and leave the infected hive for other bees to scavenge). I can only hope that when you buy one, they strongly suggest people join bee keeping clubs and/or buy certain good books to learn. Even if they do, there will be bad beekeepers, and poorly placed bees.

@newtboy, I wonder about foulbrood in this sort of hive. Are you then out the full thing or can it be disenfected since it's plastic? Hive maintenance would still be a thing , people still need to pull the frames on occasion. It won't stop mites. Nosema and other fungai will probably be a bigger issue with this design. Foulbrood and other problems will still be around, as will colony collapse disorder.

Also where are the brood kept since splitting the frame like this seems like it'd kill the brood (okay that one is answered in the KS page and you still have a brood box that you have to supply on your own).

How well does it actually work? Is this all just clever editing and done at peak honey flow season? How well does it work in the fall? Why is Bush shown talking about it, but he himself doesn't mention it on his site? Sure he's selling his own hives and the like, but I'd think if he gave them an actual try I'd think he'd say something, competition or not. It looks

I worry that too many inexperienced people who don't research or care, will try this and perhaps make many bee pests and diseases worse as they won't research things out properly. They'll just buy this and think that's nearly all there is too beekeeping and infect other hives due to their sloppy methods.

Sure they would, Theres even a name for it: Urban beekeeping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_beekeeping

I suppose its a waste of good food, but buying honey is not hurting the honeybee cause, it creates demand for more honey, which means hopefully more people will start beekeeping, which will result in more bees overall. Remember, the problem isnt the lack of honey, but the lack of pollinators, ie: bees.

On a related note, I just ordered a Flow Hive cube(https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-beehive), and cant wait to start my own beekeeping-project

Yeah man, poppies too ya frikkin' flower-murdererin' hop-junkies!!
But yeah, what oohlalasassoon says, I haven't heard about any papers being published like, everyday about POPPIES disappearing in large numbers, take opiates and shut the fuck up! That thumbnail looks like she's about to go all Josef Mengele on that poor bee...

I have osteoarthritis in my genes, mom, granny had it-Hmmmm....

(googles beekeeping)

Is that a beekeeper in the background?

>> ^EMPIRE:

the honey color is so different from region to region (and obviously in different countries).
a grea-uncle of mine is a beekeeper in his spare time, and every once in a while he sends me a whole honeycomb extracted from a single foundation like the ones they showed in this video. I have a half-eaten one in the kitchen right now, and it's sooo much darker.
Honey is great!


There was a place in Brooklyn where maraschino juice and honey were being made nearby to each other. At some points the bees would produce red-coloured honey. It was a big mystery until they put it together that the bees must be getting at the maraschino syrup while out pollinating.

the honey color is so different from region to region (and obviously in different countries).

a grea-uncle of mine is a beekeeper in his spare time, and every once in a while he sends me a whole honeycomb extracted from a single foundation like the ones they showed in this video. I have a half-eaten one in the kitchen right now, and it's sooo much darker.

Honey is great!

fuck it, *quality

Beekeepers naked ass touching bee heeves is brilliant.