Monday, November 14, 2011

Can Someone Just Please Think Of The Bees


The Urban Beehive was developed as part of Philips’ new Microbial Home project, a self-sufficient closed-loop home concept that also features items like a methane digester and a plant-based effluent (read: toilet) filtration system. It’s a design concept, so it’s not exactly coming to a Home Depot near you. But it could, and maybe it should.

The Urban Beehive has two parts that attach to your apartment window: A white frontispiece with a flower pot and a small hole for bee entry, and an orange-hued glass inverted teardrop mounted inside your house. This way you can see the bees at work, and access their honey via a small spigot.

The glass teardrop has an array of honeycomb frames for bees to build their wax cells, like existing honeybee colony kits do. The shell is orange to help the bees navigate, and there’s a small hole for the urban beekeeper to release smoke inside, should the hive ever need to be opened (smoke chills out the bees). The city benefits from the bees’ pollination work, and your apartment benefits from fresh honey and the pleasing effect of watching bees, Philips says.


Of course the only drawback are all the fat little bears in sweaters that will be getting stuck 40 flights off the pavement. I am sure there is a switch or a stick you use to dislodge the bears if that happens.

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-11/sleek-urban-beehive-concept-attaches-honeybee-colonies-apartment-windows

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