For almost a decade, Cedar and Stu tinkered away in the shed to find a way to harvest honey that was less stressful on the bees – and the beekeeper. They were chasing the beekeeper's dream.

Stu and Cedar would draw sketches and discuss ideas; then Cedar would use his remarkable lay engineering nous to come up with working prototypes.

After trialling many methods over the years, and finding nothing they were really happy with, Cedar developed an idea to split the cells horizontally. While this idea worked, it was soon replaced.

It was while working on that invention, that the real “Eureka” moment occurred.

    “I think Dad had had a few strong coffees that morning,” Cedar recalls.

    “He held his hands together in a way that resembled a honey cell and then moved them so the two halves were offset.”

    “I knew straight away exactly what he was talking about,” Cedar says.

That was the morning the Flow system was born.

Months of experimentation led to a number of prototypes, a lot of trial and error, then friendly beekeepers trying out the designs.

The frames worked. Very well indeed. And it soon became clear that Stu and Cedar had something really special that was going to change beekeeping forever.

With the patents set in place, what the Andersons needed then was capital to fund production and take Flow Hive to the world. They figured it would take about $100,000 to get the moulds made to manufacture the plastic parts for the frames.

With help from a handful of skilled friends and family members and a nail-biting lack of preparation, the Indiegogo campaign was launched in February 2015, with the humble goal of US$70,000.

That goal was reached within minutes of the campaign going live.

Within 15 minutes, the campaign had attracted US$250,000 in pre-orders and was soon breaking Indiegogo’s website and a slew of crowdfunding records.  

... and still the most successful Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign ever.            

A father and son from Northern Rivers NSW Australia invent awesome new honey harvesting system, become an overnight sensation.

It was a story that wrote itself, and over the course of the campaign, hundreds of media inquiries flooded in.

The response was far beyond Stu and Cedar’s wildest hopes.

“It was just overwhelming,” Stuart says.

“I think what we tapped into was a yearning in people to be more connected. The decline of bee populations had been on people’s minds, and I think people saw Flow as a sort of drawbridge to connect them with the natural world.”

Toward the end of the campaign, Cedar’s partner Kylie delivered a baby boy earlier than expected. With Cedar out of the picture, the campaign was extended, so he could be around for the final weeks.

The orders just kept rolling in, emails were received faster than they could be read and more of Stuart and Cedar’s friends and family were roped in to help manage the explosion.

Well, that escalated quickly. Now what?
By the end of the campaign on 19 April 2015, some 20,000 kits had been ordered from across the globe, and the scramble was on to fulfil them.

More people came on board and thousands of working hours went into a million decisions on everything from marketing and media, design and manufacturing, to logistics and customer support.

Next began the scramble to fulfil orders — before Christmas! Amazingly, Flow managed to deliver on their commitments only a few weeks behind schedule.

While leaping a succession of supply chain, manufacturing and logistics hurdles, the team were able to develop its internal processes and edge toward being not only a manufacturer and marketer of the most significant beekeeping invention since 1852 but also as a prominent advocate for bees.