Flow Bee Hive Prototype -- Honey On Tap

This is a bee hive prototype made by a father and son out of Australia that I think is just cool. The bee hive design has windows that make the activity within the hive highly visible without need of disturbing the bees. You can even harvest the honey without disturbing the bees. Plus, with a traditional hive, you'd normally only extract once per year, but with this hive design, you can harvest one frame at a time throughout the year (multiple times) so that you can try honey at different times throughout the season. No need for expensive safety gear, smokers, or extraction equipment in order to harvest (although you might still want it for inspecting). It's really a very pretty bee hive design. Since the bees are less upset during harvest, I think this would be a perfect hive for an apartment dwelling urban bee keeper (*cough*).

Seriously though, I'm considering buying this and sticking it in my apartment back yard. Always put off having a hive because our rural land is 90 minutes away and we live in an apartment in the city, so it just never seemed right to have a hive and keep a close eye on the bees, but this style hive is calling to me. Only draw back is no chance to extract bees wax, but I think it's a very fair trade-off. 

The complete 10-frame flow hive is available for $600 (but they have several other options). A similarly sized 8-frame traditional cypress hive with veil, gloves, smoker, brush and hive tool is about ($375) plus extraction equipment ($150). So that's $600 vs $525. Some might still want veil, gloves and smoker to do inspections, which might cost around $85. In that case, it makes it $685 vs $440 (plus potential shipping and bees) for start-up costs on one hive. 

Checkout this page for more info and to make donations to ramp up production on the prototype: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-beehive and check out the video:

I suspect/hope that once production on this takes off (which I think it will), the price might drop some. It's not terribly complicated a design, really, to warrant a huge price difference b/w the two hives, I don't think, just a matter of mass producing them.