FenTiger

New Beehive Lets You Harvest Honey Automatically Without Disturbing Bees | Bored Panda
Came across this on FB.

Rural Hungary

Have you read the comments, seems to have stirred up quite a debate!

FenTiger

Honey on tap ..... I thought ..... this is gotta be a joke ....

.... think I was quite tired when I first saw it as I didn't pay the whole article much attention

Peter_in_Hungary

Methinks this is a joke! Bees collect honey and store it in the comb, the temperature and ventilation maintained by the bees evaporates some of the water from the honey and when it is the correct consistency (and full) the bees cap the cell. Given that the honey does not flow out whilst the bees are filling the comb I don't see it falling out the back once the cell is capped. OK I know that the bees build comb cells with a slight upward cant but even when the honey is watery it does not flow out. I knew an old bee keeper who, rather than spin the comb, he put the comb in the (Hungarian summer) sun under glass to heat up sufficiently to get the honey to flow out. Without the greenhouse effect of the glass the honey would not flow out.

So I am sceptical about this claim and wait to be persuaded. (Also a jar of honey near a hive would be absolutely swarming with bees, wasps and hornets)

Rural Hungary

If you read the comments Peter, the capping question is referred to and it seems the idea would work but the concerns over maintenance and checking the health of the hive and the integrity of the collected honey would be valid and if anything, I think it's more a novelty than something beekeepers would take seriously.