RTR2EX0S
A queen bee (C) is seen among other bees in a honeycomb at a bee farm near the city of Probishtip, some 140 km (87 miles) east from the capital Skopje June 8, 2010. Honey, a traditional medicine in Macedonia is used to treat common ailments. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski

An Australian father-son duo plans to change the way honey is harvested. The team of two now has millions to realise their plans.

All Stuart and Cedar Anderson asked from their fundraising campaign was $70,000. While this was not a small amount to raise through crowd-funding, what followed their pledge was no short of a fairy-tale. When last checked, their project has collected $2,697,413 from 6,839 funders. The Indiegogo campaign started on Feb 22 and still has 40 days left.

“Flow Hive Honey on Tap Directly From Your Beehive,” as the project is called, is claimed to be “the most significant innovation in beekeeping since 1852.” It is a revolutionary beehive invention which allows harvesting honey without opening the hive and with minimal disturbance to the bees, the official website says. The invention allows you to “turn the tap and watch as pure, fresh, clean honey flows right out of the hive and into your jar.”

Within a couple of hours of the start of the campaign, the Andersons managed to sell beehives worth $830,000. It took them around three hours to cross the million-dollar mark. According to reports, the first 500 top-of-the-line beehives, worth $US600 each, were sold out within an hour. Now the co-inventors have also offered cheaper options with the release of a further 1000 hives.

The Andersons also claim that 3kg) of honey can be harvested with one frame of the hive. If all the frames are filled with honey, there can be more than 20 kg of honey in every box. The honey is without wax or filtering. The “pure fresh unprocessed honey” is apparently “Ready For The Table.”

The Australian inventors had an idea about how much people were interested in their project when they posted a video of the invention on YouTube. The video managed to get a million views within a couple of days.

The extra-ordinary public response to the campaign puts the Australian project ahead Australian start-ups LiFX (raising $1.3 million for smart light bulbs), Ninja Blocks’s Ninja Sphere (raising $700, 00) and 5 Lives Studios (raising £461,000 for PC game Satellite Reign).

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@IBTimes.com.au