AI-powered mobility vehicle. is the answer to responsible beekeeping in urban farms

Bees are vital for the planet, given they are excellent pollinators, and perhaps the most crucial link in maintaining biodiversity. They help in ensuring food security, and also diversify the kinds of plants and animals that are nurtured on the face of the earth. Perhaps that’s the reason beekeeping and pollination need to be promoted more than other things to maintain the balance.

After the horrors of the Delta Air Lines Shipping neglect that killed five million honeybees enroute to nurseries in Alaska for pollination of apple orchards, it’s crucial to have ultra-mobile beekeeping methods to safeguard these wild insects. The 2035 Moving Beehive Mobility is something the beekeeping industry needs for good. As the name suggests, this is a high-tech beekeeping nest for responsible culturing. But we all need it before the year 2035 given all the chaos on the planet!

Designer: Seokbin Hong

The project sponsored by the American Chemistry Council is still in the conceptualization stage, and by no stretch of the imagination, a solution that’s improbable. The idea is deeply engraved in the concept design keeping in mind the intricacies of honeybee culture aided by AI. Things like optimum temperature, protection from predators like hornets, or preventing the spread of disease in the colony. The mobility aspect of the project is something that’ll keep the current beekeepers interested – especially the ones in urban areas.

This moving beehive is ideal for open pollination in orchards without the hassle of old-school beekeeping methods. The autonomous vehicle keeps a tab on the number of honeybees in the artificial colony cocooned inside, and the real-time temperature levels. The entrance to the beehive at the bottom of the vehicle can be opened or closed as desired for the bees to pollinate the designated area. To keep off the hornets from decimating the honey producers, there’s a trap on top that sends off the scent of the hive to attract the insects. This keeps the main hive away from harm’s way.

Moving Beehive Mobility has a beekeeping box with a queen excluder, a separate honey storage section and hive bodies. When mobility is not required the rig can stand upright, disconnecting from the rear. The front tires lock in place to provide a steady position for beekeepers to perform their routine tasks.

The post AI-powered mobility vehicle. is the answer to responsible beekeeping in urban farms first appeared on Yanko Design.

The world’s most innovative beehive makes beekeeping efficient, reduces waste & gets honey on tap!





Bees are essential to keeping multiple ecosystems in balance as they pollinate trees and crate food for other animals – they are essential for our survival! Now coming to the little ‘sweet’ things we all love about bees is that they also produce honey. Beekeeping is an ancient practice and beehives have hardly gotten design upgrades but Flow Hive is changing the game. These beehives are good for the bees, innovative, reduce waste, and are so efficient that you actually get honey on tap…literally!

The Flow Pollinator House not only benefits bee populations in your yard, but the proceeds also support advocacy groups across the country. This bee shelter and hive is made by a father-son duo who took a different approach to honey harvesting that is less stressful to the bees and their keeper. It features a mechanism that simply releases the honey straight into jars without the hassles typically associated with the harvest.





The Flow Pollinator House not only benefits bee populations in your yard, but the proceeds also support advocacy groups across the country. This bee shelter and hive is made by a father-son duo who took a different approach to honey harvesting that is less stressful to the bees and their keeper. It features a mechanism that simply releases the honey straight into jars without the hassles typically associated with the harvest.

The process of making the Flow Hive results in cutoff waste, so the company decided it was time to make use of it. Upcycling the sustainably sourced bamboo and salvaged Araucaria timber from the production of the Flow Hive models resulted in the development of the Flow Pollinator House. The house offers protection for hard-working native solitary nesting bees. It encourages them to work nearby, pollinating gardens, flowers and other plants in the vicinity. The Flow Pollinator House comes flat-packed as a DIY kit, complete with everything you’ll need to build it. You can create a custom format by choosing how to arrange the wood tubes and design the exterior to your liking with stain or paint.

Because the house kits originate from leftover wood materials, there are a limited number of Flow Pollinator Houses for the season. They can make a great gift for the gardener, nature lover or advocate in your life. Plus, the product line is a benefit program with the company committing to donate 100% of all proceeds to U.S.-based pollinator advocacy, education, and protection groups.

“The honey bee is one of 19,000 bee species in the world that are essential to pollination and life on this planet as we know it,” said Cedar Anderson, CEO and founder of Flow Hive. “We created this upcycled pollinator home to provide a safe place for solitary bees to raise their young, while offering our customers a fun, family-friendly project to build together. By creating this habitat in your backyard, together we are building the stepping stones across the urban landscape which may just help save some of these important species from the brink of extinction.” Flow Hive is a truly bee-utiful upgrade for the bees!

Designer: Honey Flow

This insane modular camera rig lets you mount hexagonal cameras for higher-resolution 3D video capture

The RayShaper BeeHive works on principles of computational photography/videography… something your smartphone already does but on a much bigger, more powerful scale.

A winner of the Red Dot Product Design Award, the RayShaper BeeHive is trying to reinvent professional photography/cinematography by borrowing a clever trick from the most popular camera in the world – the one in your pocket. You see, as smartphones were struggling to compete over who could build a bigger, better camera, someone figured out that the secret to better photography was to just introduce multiple cameras. Famously, the iPhone X’s dual-lens setup kickstarted the trend of using two cameras to handle the workload of one single powerful camera. One lens captured color detail, the other focused on black and white detail, and working just like the rods and cones in your eyes do, both those photos were composited together to make one single image that was vastly better than what a single camera lens could do. In fact, two lenses could help the smartphone identify depth too, allowing the iPhone to click ‘Portrait Mode’ photos – a trend that really picked up back in 2017.

RayShaper’s cameras follow the same principle. Their unique hexagonal shape allows you to create a ‘honeycomb’ of multiple cameras snapped together. This array has two main benefits – firstly, the slightly offset cameras allow you to capture a wider shot without using a wider lens, and while provide spatial resolutions of over 1 billion pixels at 120fps. Secondly, the offset cameras allow you to capture depth information too, and even perform spatial recordings with 6 degrees-of-freedom (6 DoF) that are necessary for VR headsets. “Compared with ultra-high-resolution and light field camera systems currently on the market that use legacy architectures, BeeHive provides higher performance at a much cheaper cost”, say the folks at RayShaper. The modules allow you to add or subtract lenses on the fly, and give you the power to build up your camera setup without necessarily needing to upgrade by buying the newest cameras. Just add a few more modules and you’ve got a camera rig that’s much more powerful!

The RayShaper BeeHive is a winner of the Red Dot Product Design Award for the year 2020.

This sustainable beehive is designed to replicates the microclimate of the bee’s natural habitat!




Bees are essential to keep our ecosystem running as we know it, these master pollinators play a huge role in supporting the growth of trees, flowers, and other plants that serve as food + shelter for all living beings. They contribute to complex, interconnected ecosystems that allow a diverse number of different species to co-exist. HIIVE is a beehive designed to help beekeepers to keep their bees in a more natural way compared to traditional hives. It is crafted from sustainable materials and with low-energy sensors to give the beekeeping experience a much-needed upgrade since it has been 150 years since the conventional bee box design!

It supports the inherent behavior of the Apis Mellifera aka the European honeybee which is one of the most common types. “At first we just wanted to design a more ergonomic beehive. While studying design, we accompanied several beekeepers. The first time we saw the treatment against the Varroa Mite (biggest enemy of the honeybee), it was shocking. The chemical treatment had a direct effect on the bees‘ behavior. We found that there is a more serious problem to be solved than the ergonomics of beekeeping. So we spoke to scientists for advice and they repeatedly pointed out the problem with the wrong microclimate in conventional bee-boxes,” explained Potthast and that is how the concept came to bee.

HIIVE is designed to replicate the microclimate of a tree cave which is the natural habitat of the European honey bee. According to research, honey bees in tree caves live healthier lives and are better equipped to deal with parasites because of circumstantial lessons. HIIVE is essentially the first tree cave that can be produced at an industrial scale.

It offers a tree cave-like geometry without cold bridges which makes it easy for the winter bees. The frame is made from recycled plastic and a textile cover to protect against the weather. Its also insulated with natural thermo hemp wool and an additional vapor barrier film for optimum moisture control. Thanks to the insulation the animals have to use less energy to heat up or cool down the house and this “leisure time” has positive effects on their behavior which promotes grooming naturally.

Potthast spent a year researching and studying design with beekeepers to understand the demands of both animals and humans. When biologists pointed out that the microclimate is the biggest issue, the build of the first version of HIIVE was made and insulated with natural hemp wool. “For the prototyping phase, we used 3D printing for all structural components and laser cutting for the wood parts. We have tested the first prototype with a bee colony and it worked well for the microclimate. But the handling wasn’t satisfying and the volume needed to be adjusted,” explained Potthast.

The redesign was more efficient and has a two-chamber system – one honey chamber and one brood chamber – which are easily extractable. This makes it possible to harvest honey respectfully. The amount of plastic was also reduced by over 85% thanks to the use of the textile cover. It has a low manufacturing cost and therefore can be affordable for beekeepers across the globe.

Conventional bee boxes neglect the demands that honey bees actually make on a home. Bees prefer a round shape and good insulation which is naturally found in tree caves. But in conventional boxes, they need to spend a lot of energy on keeping the desired temperature during the seasons. There is also no living space for symbionts and if parasites enter then the bees get in trouble which results in beekeepers having to treat them with chemicals. In contrast, HIIVE was designed with a human-animal-centered approach. It brings beekeeping back to nature and ensures a healthy life for bees.

“At the moment we are conducting a field test with 10 prototypes of the latest version. The plan is to bring HIIVE to series production after all tests are made,” said Potthast as he spoke about the design’s future. “The next step is also the development of the campanion app, which will create a new way of keeping bees. With smart sensors we have the possibility to create not only health tracking of each colony, but also a swarm alarm combined with a swarm net. In this way beekeepers get notified when exactly to expect a swarm so they can keep bees in a very natural way without regulating their swarm behavior,” he added.

HIIVE is the perfect combination of a natural and healthy home for bees as well as ergonomic and easy to use by beekeepers. The integrated app will make beekeeping more efficient and safe while the low-cost design will make it easy to be mass-produced without adding to the plastic pollution problem. It is un-bee-lievably good for a beehive!

Designer: Philip Potthast

HIIVE is a runner-up for the James Dyson Awards 2021 and has many more notable achievements through its journey from concept to completion.

This McDonald’s Is Staffed by Bees

Sweden now has the world’s smallest McDonald’s restaurant. It may be tiny but it is packed with workers called drones, and has room to serve thousands of guests. They don’t make burgers and fries though. They have just one item on the menu: honey. That’s because it is filled with bees.

This fully-functional beehive is designed to look like a McDonald’s. I mean it looks exactly like the fast food restaurant, only in miniature. The McHive has all of the details of the real deal, including the iconic Golden Arches standing on the removable miniature rooftop, glass doors, full pane windows complete with promotional posters, railings, and even a couple of drive-thru windows.

Buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz, I’m lovin’ it.

Of course, now there’s going to be a Burger Queen beehive that opens up across the street and the competition is going to be fierce. I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about it. Then there will be a Wendy’s, and before you know it Sweden is going to be overrun with fast-food beehives. Then the fattened-up bees and their miniature restaurants will take over the world, with no humans left to eat their honey.

[via Mike Shouts]

A Buzzworthy Beehive

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The Local Bee service brings people closer to their local bee keeper and, in essence, their honey too! After getting up close and personal with a beekeeper and the bees themselves, designer Will Jordan saw opportunities to improve the artificial hive which has gone largely unchanged for many years. The result is a hive that’s not only more functional but aesthetically friendly!

First, the hive is elevated to mimic that of a natural hive. Placed 2 meters above the ground it protects the bees from critters and invaders that may want to steal honey or cause distress to the bees. It also allows for the bees to enter the hive from the bottom, which allows them to create comb with gravity as they would naturally.

Second, the new hive’s material composition promotes a healthy climate while also keeping external sound disturbance to a minimum. It consists of cork, wood and mycelium (a material made from mushrooms). Drastic temperature can cause shock and result in bee death. In between the cork and the mycelium there are pockets that trap air to prevent dramatic changes in temperature. This, in combination with the cork and mycelium as insulating materials, keeps the hive’s temperature consistent. Additionally, the cork also acts as an acoustic dampener to prevent noise disturbance.

Designer: Will Jordan

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Honey I shrunk the beehive!

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You know, you’re much better off breeding actual animals than virtual ones on your smartphone. The Homehive is your own apiary kit that allows you to not just breed bees with ease (rhymes!) but also tap the honeycomb for your own freshly made honey!

Bees are probably the most important keys to human survival on this planet but they’re a dying breed. Scientists predict that it won’t take long for bees to be extinct and we could be battling an apocalypse just years after. Homehive lets you be a part of the solution. Creating a safe haven for an entire bee-clan, the home hive not only allows an eco-system to thrive in your household, but you’re also constantly rewarded with delicious fresh honey!

Designer: Jonathan Cohen

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Bee Beautiful!

The Ru urban beehive concept focuses on aesthetics to encourage the reintegration of bees into city environments. The idea is simple: by enhancing the aesthetic, a deeper emotional connection can be created with an object that has stereotypically negative connotation. With its sculptural form, the Ru hive might improve human acceptance and raise awareness to the recent bee population decline. The beehive would be installed in parks, on greenhouse roofs or other predetermined urban areas.

Designer: Marc-André Roberge

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Backyard Beehive

The alarming decline in honey bee populations has gotten a great deal of attention in recent years and this has translated into numerous products to curb the odd disappearance. Rowan Dunford’s Urban Beehive represents a modern take on the traditional hive that will appeal to contemporary home environments. The lightweight, stackable, and flat-pack-ready design has a simple and understated aesthetic. With straightforward setup and operation, the casual beekeeper can be up-and-running in no time.

Designer: Rowan Dunford

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