What to say to detractors of FlowHive

When i saw the FlowHive, i immediately ordered one and then i braced myself for the critics. You will hear that this is awful and dangerous, that diseases will be spread (any lousy beekeeper will cause problems no matter the type of hive if they don’t look after it), that the bees like to build their own combs and cells (yes, like mothers like to wash their kids dirty clothes by hand in order to ‘connect’ with them, not! I have kept bees and they always used the foundation frames before using the free spaces i left for them to build their own comb) and that only the proven and ‘traditional’ beehives are acceptable.
However, not many people know that the Langstroth beehive was only patented in 1852, that’s right, only 150 years ago, this is what allowed the production of honey on an industrial scale. Now, the Warre beehive, which people think existed from time immemorial is even newer than that, Emile Warre was born in 1867, so the Warre hive is even younger than the Langstroth (before that wild swarms were captured, put in boxes and destroyed to get the honey)! However a lot of people speak as if either of those two systems are THE thing dictated by a deity from the top of a mountain.
Let’s not forget that Copernicus and Galileo were threatened and ridiculed for daring to bring forward the theory that the earth moved around the sun and not the other way around. In other words Cedar’s invention is paramount and momentous but it might take a while for it to be accepted as the wonderful thing it is, wonderful for the bees, wonderful for the beekeeper and, in time, wonderful for the environment. Meanwhile, we can be serene and smug in our knowledge that we are in the Galileo corner :wink: Elyane

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