Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Gadget Allows You to Keep Bees In Your Apartment

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong? dept.

greenrainbow writes "Philips just unveiled a new concept for an urban beehive that would allow anyone to become an amateur bee keeper – even those who live in apartments with no backyards. Best of all you pull a little string and all the fresh honey you want comes out. Hopefully no bees come with it!"

2 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How Do You Prime/Put a Swarm Into This? by Moryath · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A lot of good questions there.

    I would presume that there's some form of service contract or services that can be purchased for things like "seeding" a new hive. What I'd be more worried about is the aspect of getting it cleaned out if you had a hive die-off due to infection or mites.

    As for how bees select their hives... that's an oddity. I would guess that there was some unknown difference between your aunt's two hives - either in the genealogy of the bees themselves, or the location of the hive, like too much or too little shade compared to the other one. As you said, they can be fickle creatures. With the indoor/outdoor aspect, I'd be more worried about them getting fooled by the interior temperature during winter, and sending out all their scouts to die off in freezing temperatures.

    In the other side though... you're about one 5-year-old with a baseball bat from having an angry swarm of bees in your apartment and a giant honey mess on the floor with this design. I don't know if that's such a great thought.

  2. Re:As a beekeper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Also as a fellow beekeeper, there are so many things wrong with this system that I don't know where to start. Beekeeping is taking care of bees, and unless you can pull and inspect combs to deal with queen cells/aging queens/wax moths/mites/foul brood/cycling old comb/harvesting/collecting pollen?/oh dear god...

    Let alone, keeping the bees room temperature during the winter encourages the hive to fly on cold days and kill itself.

    Oh, and the weight of the hive will drastically increase and change over the course of the year. Where's the physical support?

    And how would you get your bees into the hive in the first place? Not a large enough opening to dump a box of bees in. ...

    *sigh*