The Red Bulletin June 2020 (US)

63
Beekeeper and inventor, 40, AUS.
Anderson lives near Byron Bay in
New South Wales, where he still
makes prototypes in his garden.
Cedar
Anderson
Plan Bee
How one Australian inventor’s
backyard creation has revolutionized
modern apiculture.
“One of the most dangerous things to our
world is believing that somebody else is
going to fix it,” says Cedar Anderson. The
Australian started fixing problems at age 8,
when he built a go-kart to drive to school.
Today he drives a car he adapted to run on
used vegetable oil, or he flies to work using
a self-built electric paramotor. But most
notably, this belief is what led him to invent
a revolutionary beehive.
“As a kid, I didn’t have TV, so we’d go
into the workshop and make stuff,” says
Anderson, who was raised in a New South
Wales community built around nature and
sustainability. “We were pretty poor, so we
had to be inventive. We were encouraged to
just have a go. So when I found harvesting
honey was an incredible amount of hot,
heavy, messy work, and that you can’t help
but squash a bunch of bees in the process,
I thought there had to be a better way.”
After 10 years of working on the problem
with his beekeeper father, Stuart, he found
a solution: the Flow Hive. The honeycomb
cells in each frame split vertically instead of
horizontally, so honey can be extracted by
turning a tap, causing the bees zero stress.
“It was wild,” says Anderson. “One day
we’re inventing and living in a shed; the
next, we’ve launched a crowd-funder that
hit $1 million worth of orders in two hours!”
Today there are more than 75,000 Flow
Hives being used in 130 countries, and the
invention has attracted tens of thousands
of new beekeepers to the trade. “Agriculture
and honeybees go hand in hand,” says
Anderson. “A single hive can pollinate 50
million flowers a day. No other species can
achieve that. For us, it’s this sense of being
able to have a positive impact on the world.”
Despite his success, Anderson remains
a true backyard inventor. “I think many of
us have great ideas,” he says, “but only a
few of us really act on them. One essential
trait is stubborn persistence, and that’s
something I carry. I don’t give up easily.”
Above: The Flow Hive is laser-cut from sustainable woods, including western
red cedar and araucaria (bees not included). Right: Honey man Cedar Anderson
FLOW RACHAEL SIGEE
74 THE RED BULLETIN