Australian Story: Flow Hive for beekeepers worth millions from Cedar Anderson

A HUMBLE Australian beekeeper, who used crowd-funding to revolutionise the way the world extracts honey from bee hives, made a cool $16 million.

Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart created the ‘Flow Hive’, which became a beekeepers’ dream.

The Flow Hive consists of a plastic frame with a honeycomb matrix on which bees work to fill up each cell with honey. Once full and capped off, honey starts to flow out when a lever is turned outside the hive. The honey drains out and into a jar on the outside, leaving the bees to continue their work.

The Andersons from NSW told Australian Story they coudn’t believe how popular the invention became when they launched it on the Kickstarter crowd-funding site, in order to get the product to other beekeepers and interested consumers.

Originally, they were looking to raise $US70,000 ($96,952) to buy a new tool for the factory, but the campaign went viral and they made more than $US2 million ($A2.7m) in a day.

Eight weeks later, they had raised $US12.2 million ($A16.9m) and had to make 24,000 orders to be sent to 140 countries.

Cedar’s colleague Yari McGauley recalled how it unfolded.

“We overwhelmed the crowd-funding website, broke one of the biggest crowd-funding platforms in the world. We had people screaming out, ‘Take our money!’ People were buying, they didn’t even know what they were buying. It was a frenzy. It was like a rock concert, you know? Our Facebook page was just inundated. All the product we knew we could make at our existing factory in Brisbane, we’d sold out in 15 minutes. And everyone looked around the room to each other and said, ‘Well, what are we gonna do now?’”

That’s when Cedar’s life changed forever. He became a multi-millionaire, and a first-time dad as his wife Kylie Ezart gave birth to their first child.

While thrilled with the outcome of their business venture, Cedar and Stuart are not in it for money. Contrary to what people might think, their family members say they still drive old HiLux utes running on vegetable oil.

But Cedar said he has changed, if ever so slightly.

“Yeah, I have changed,” Cedar laughed.

“The idea of having a 9am to 5pm office job was just frightening. To me, freedom is being able to do what I’m inspired to do. It’s being able to work on inventions, whenever I have an idea.”

He also spoke of the experience he has had so far with his father.

“It’s been an amazing thing to work with my dad.

“To me, the most important thing is that that relationship stays strong. To me, I’d throw it all away if it was threatening our relationship.”

“With a bit of coaching, I went and purchased my first new pair of shoes in 20 years. It was a bit of a dropping of the guard.”

Cedar said the business has grown so much that his entire family is involved from “uncles to brothers, grandfather, sisters and cousins”.

While Cedar admitted to feeling “stress” for the first time in his life, he said he keeps “calm and collected”.

“It just hits me every now and again. I’m just like, ‘Oh, my gosh! Cedar, look what you just did,” he said.

“What’s really important is that the bees are taken care of, because harvesting honey is only one part of a beekeepers challenges, it is taking care of the bees and making sure they are healthy. I really, really love bees,” he added.

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