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IPFS News Link • Food

Philips's beehive concept - an urban home for the 21st Century bee

• Gizmag.com

The collapse of honey-bee colonies is bad news. Seventy-four out of 100 different crop types that account for 90 percent of the global food output are pollinated by bees, but the direct cause of the phenomenon called the Colony Collapse Disorder remains unknown. Efforts are being made to bring the bee population back to a healthy level with city councils around the world encouraging the 3000 year old practice of keeping bees in cities. While not proclaiming to solve large scale crop pollination problems, Philips has turned its know-how to the equation with this futuristic concept catering for the needs of the urban beekeeper.

The Urban Beehive concept is a part of the Microbial Home Project - Philips's effort at creating a domestic ecosystem of innovative design solutions to cleaning, energy, human waste, lighting and food preservation. The house is viewed as a biological machine capable of filtering, processing and recycling what we would normally think of as waste.
 
The bees enter the glass pane mounted beehive via an entry tunnel located just above a welcoming pollen-filled flowerpot. On the inside the bees encounter a set of honeycomb structures that they use to lay their larvae, as well as store honey and pollen. If you'd rather not meet the bees in person, you can simply watch them toil away safe in the knowledge that there is a gradient-tinted glass barrier between you and the laborious critters (only the orange wavelength of light which is invisible to bees gets through the glass). And if you feel adventurous enough to actually remove the glass cover and collect some honey, you can calm the bees down by releasing smoke into the hive at the pull of a cord.
 

1 Comments in Response to

Comment by Powell Gammill
Entered on:

Top Bar Hive design:

http://www.permaculture.org/nm/index.php/site/beekeeping_permaculture

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Top-Bar-Beekeeping-Method.aspx

http://www.biobees.com/

http://www.arbico-organics.com/product/garden-hive/beneficial-insects-pollinators

http://www.beesource.com/how-to-start-beekeeping/



www.universityofreason.com/a/29887/KWADzukm