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The world is experiencing a global bee crisis and with bees responsible for almost a third of the food on our plate this is a crisis that could affect us all In the winter of 2013 areas of Europe

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CHRIS RUSSELL, PRESENTER: Hi. I'm Chris Russell.When I was a judge on The New Inventors, we loved inventions that changed the game - particularly ones that transformed food production. Now, Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart have done just that: simplifying honey harvesting by revolutionising the humble beehive. From living off the smell of an oily rag, they've now become multi-millionaires. But how will they cope moving from a simple life, tinkering in a shed, to running a complex international company? This is their story.

(Footage of Cedar and Stuart Anderson in beekeeper suits, smoking a beehive)

CEDAR ANDERSON: My grandfather kept bees. My father had bees. We had bees as a kid.

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: We used to pull apart the beehives using my Mum's old hat and veils and rubber gloves and gaffer tape and so on around their socks. (Laughs)

CEDAR ANDERSON: There's me and my brother Chris getting the honey out and they'd get so ferocious that I'd just have to stand back, you know. I thought there must be a way just to tap honey straight out of the hive, without opening the hive, that is more gentle on the bees.

(Footage of Cedar and Stuart using Flow Hive)
CEDAR ANDERSON: Here it goes.
STUART ANDERSON: That's the first drop, so that's pouring.
CEDAR ANDERSON: It's pouring in! You can see the honey absolutely pouring out there.
STUART ANDERSON: Yeah.
CEDAR ANDERSON: That is amazing. The first successful attempt at getting honey out of a box without opening the hive
(End of footage)

(Excerpt of Cedar and Stuart Anderson interview from Sunrise, Channel 7)
ANDREW O'KEEFE, PRESENTER: Are you surprised that you've had this incredible response?
(Excerpt ends)

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: The media interest was, was massive, it was all over the world.

PRESENTER (WABC-TV, New York City): ...who is here to tell us about a new beehive that makes harvesting honey a cinch.

CEDAR ANDERSON: It was then we realised that this was actually really big and we had to move really fast. We had invented the beekeeper's dream. The idea of having a nine-to-five office job was just frightening. To me freedom is, you know, being able to do what I'm inspired to do. It's being able to work on inventions whenever I have an idea. If I sit on the toilet I look at the toilet roll and I go, "How is that dispenser working? Oh, OK. Why didn't they do it differently?" you know. And that's what I did when I looked in a beehive. It's like: how does that all work? How do the bees work? How can we do it differently? How can we do it better?

RADHA NICHOLSON, MOTHER: When Cedar gets an idea, he's utterly tenacious. He really believes that if the human mind has worked something out, he can too.

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: I don't think anyone really ever told him what he had to do or that he had to pursue a certain career. And his upbringing allowed him to, you know, nurture his own natural curiosity and follow his own instincts.

(Excerpt from 'Nimbin to Paradise', A Big Country, ABC TV, 1983)
BRYAN SMITH, REPORTER: A whole new wave of Nimbin pilgrims are still keen to discover an alternative to the consumptive society; a way of surviving with little. After the last festival many stayed, formed communes, raised their children.
(Excerpt ends)

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: I met my wife to be, Radha, at a healing festival which is (laughs) where everyone goes away with tropical ulcers and all sorts of sicknesses for those sort of healing festivals. And she was part of the group up here in northern New South Wales that wanted to form a community.

CEDAR ANDERSON: All the founders of our community decided to do something different and I'm one of the children from there. It was a fantastic way to grow up. I just loved it. It's like its own little village, really, where everybody knows everybody. And it was freedom for us: 360 acres of forest and houses and places to play and swimming in the creek.

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: Cedar was such a dreamer when he was little, you know. It would take him half an hour to walk 10 minutes because he was always lost a bit in his own little world and he's always kind of just walked to his own groove.

CEDAR ANDERSON: We didn't have TV and so we'd invent all sorts of things to do for fun. We built this electric shock machine. I can remember it was a hit amongst all of us kids. We'd join hands and sit around in a circle and hold onto these terminals and be getting this ding-ding-ding-ding-ding. (Laughs)

(Footage of Cedar and Stuart retrieving an old go-kart from)
CEDAR ANDERSON: Oh, the wheels still roll. Much more fun than going to school.
(Stuart laughs. Footage ends)

CEDAR ANDERSON: My Dad: he was the mechanic and the fix-it guy. He would rig up the whole power system: so turbine in the creek, solar panels, batteries.

(Excerpt from MTV World Tour, MTV Europe, 1997)
REPORTER: Much of the food for the 40 men and women in this community comes from the communal garden.
CEDAR ANDERSON: It's not any particular person's garden. You know everybody and there's no "stranger danger" and you can just stroll around free and that's been...
REPORTER (1997): That's nice.
CEDAR ANDERSON: ...one of the best things growing up here.
(Cedar plays a guitar
(End of excerpt)

CEDAR ANDERSON: Neither of my parents did criticism, so there was this sense of encouragement all the time that really gave me a sense of: I can do anything; this sense of not afraid to have a go.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Everywhere we would go together, he would want to help people. Like, you know, we'd turn up at someone's house and their dishwasher would be broken and he'd just always have the time of day to fix it.

CEDAR ANDERSON: Somehow I grew up not in that rat race of having to have a nine-to-five job. And that's allowed me basically to put time into this Flow Hive invention.

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: Ten years ago Cedar had this idea: "Come on, we must be able to get honey from a beehive without opening it and extracting and stressing the bees and everything." And at the time I thought: whoa. You know, that, that is a big ask.

CEDAR ANDERSON: For years I tried to get honey out of honeycomb cells that were fully formed: so casting piston plungers that went down cells.

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: To my surprise - really, I was surprised that, that Cedar went away and started making them.

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: So there was stage after stage after stage of inventing this thing.

CEDAR ANDERSON: One morning I remember clearly waking up and going, "Ah! It doesn't have to be honeycomb cells all the time. It can be move apart and be not honeycomb cells when it's time to drain the honey.

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: Cedar sat there by hand cutting some of those prototypes and, you know, painfully cutting them out, you know. 'Cause that was, you know, the cheapest way to do it.

CEDAR ANDERSON: After a few strong coffees one morning Stu goes, "Oh, how about instead of in the horizontal direction, we move it like that?" (Mimes diagonal separation of honeycomb) And straight away, I dropped everything.

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: Yeah, amazing...

CEDAR ANDERSON: I was like, "Ohhhh."

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: Their minds spark off each other and there's this really beautiful connection when they're working: looking at what things worked, didn't work. And they're off and they're just like, "dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit" and you go, "Um, guys, I need- just- ha- oh, I'll just leave you to it." (Laughs)

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: Cedar lives really humbly. He lives on this big bush block right next to the ocean near Byron Bay and it's probably a good 15, 20 minutes' drive over rough, corrugated roads. And just living, really, in a shed, essentially, which has- half of the shed's devoted to beekeeping and his little inventing space there. And then the other half is the house that he shares with his partner. You know, I think over the years he's tried to add some mod cons to it: a dishwasher and... (Laughs)

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: We actually call ourselves the Wombles - the Wombles of Wimbledon, do you remember that? "Making good use of the things that you find, things that the everyday folk leave behind"? That was us.

CEDAR ANDERSON: I was borrowing money off family and friends. I was doing just the odd jobs, just enough to pay the bills, but my main focus would just be on the invention.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: I think there were times where I was wondering whether it would be successful, you know, and sort of how long we could keep going if it wasn't.

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: My Dad helped fund the prototypes and the patents which, you know, made it possible for Cedar and I to move ahead without running around the countryside, looking for money.

(Footage of Cedar and Stuart looking at patent application on computer)
CEDAR ANDERSON: There's another patent beyond this one which isn't published.
(Footage ends)

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: The Flow Hive is a frame, a honeycomb matrix as such, built out of plastic. When the cell is filled with honey and capped off by the bees, a lever's turned and the cell splits and the honey then drains down through the channel that that makes, out a tube, into a jar at the bottom.

CEDAR ANDERSON: We finally had a prototype in the hive that we really hoped would work.

(Home video footage of Stuart pulling out a frame from a beehive)
STUART ANDERSON: That's pretty full.
(Footage ends)

CEDAR ANDERSON: And it was time to test this invention. The bees had actually built onto our prototype, which was exciting. And it was time to turn the spanner on the outside of the hive and see if it actually worked.

(Home video footage of first Flow Hive test)
STUART ANDERSON: And we've got two levers here... so I'm going to do that now from here. I'm rolling it.
CEDAR ANDERSON: Wow. Look, it's just starting to flow down the tube.
STUART ANDERSON: Oh, yes. There it goes.
CEDAR ANDERSON: There it goes.
STUART ANDERSON: That's the first drop. So that's pouring.
CEDAR ANDERSON: It's pouring in!
STUART ANDERSON: Hooray.
CEDAR ANDERSON: Excellent.
STUART ANDERSON: It's really pouring. Look at the height of it in there.
CEDAR ANDERSON: Yay.
STUART ANDERSON: I think we've done it.
CEDAR ANDERSON: That's incredible. It's just streaming out into the trough at the bottom. Oh, look at it filling into the jar. It's just pouring in. It could totally revolutionize the way that apiary is done today.
(Footage ends)

CEDAR ANDERSON: We just...

(Stuart laughs)

CEDAR ANDERSON: We just laughed, didn't we? Just unbelievable. People say inventors forget everything when they see their invention work for the first time. They forget the whole world around them. I just remember lying back on the grass and going, you know...

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: Wow, we've done it.

CEDAR ANDERSON: We've done it.So we had the invention. Now it's: how do we get it to market?

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: Even though we'd grown up as hippy children playing in the forest and that we'd come from that background, we're not against technology. Cedar and Stu both wanted to use crowdfunding to fund the project, rather than get investors. And so crowdfunding basically is where you, you know, approach the world and put forward a video saying, "This is my idea. This is what I want to make. Will you support it, donate or purchase?"

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Before the crowdfunding campaign began, I actually found out I was pregnant. I think it just sort of gave him a bit of a kick up the butt really as well: "OK, well, we've gotta do this crowdfunding thing now. You know, we've gotta do it before this baby comes."

CHRIS ANDERSON, BROTHER: Cedar was thinking sort of on a worldwide level from the word go. And he had our sister Mirabai on deck. She is a professional filmer and so she did a bunch of the videos.

(Footage of Mirabai editing footage. Cedar looks on)
CEDAR ANDERSON: Yeah. That looks good
MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR: That looks really cool.
CEDAR ANDERSON: Come back a bit?
MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR: Yeah.
CEDAR ANDERSON: Look at it. It's Photoshopped.
MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR (laughs): Yeah.
(Footage ends)

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: We worked and we worked and we reshot and we refilmed and we tweaked, 'cause we were all learning, you know?

(Excerpt from crowdfunding video)
CEDAR ANDERSON: For those that don't know, harvesting your honey used to be a real labour of love. You had to crack the hive open, pull out the frames trying not to squash bees, brush them off the comb, transport the frames to a processing shed, cut the wax capping off, filter the honey and clean up all the mess. Then the frames have to go back to the hives again.
(Excerpt ends)

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: We didn't know. It's like, "Oh, maybe it is just some crazy idea from hippies on the North Coast." (Laughs)

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: And we had no idea that it would go to the level it did.

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: So the crowdfunding campaign kicked off on Monday and we were hoping to raise $70,000 to set up a bigger tool in the factory.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Cedar and Stu were actually in Canberra to do the media launch, so I called in some friends who were helping out to have our little launch here at our kitchen table at headquarters.

(Footage of Kylie with computer, looking at crowdfunding site)
KYLIE EZART: Do you want me to launch it? Yeah, yeah, launch it.
YARI MCGAULEY: OK. Good. We're launching. Here we go.
KYLIE EZART: Almost ready to go live. Now what do we do? What do we do, what do we do?
YARI MCGAULEY: Oh, no.
FRIEND: So this hasn't been filed out yet? Oh, so this stuff has to be filled out?
KYLIE EZART: We haven't filled out the basic...
YARI MCGAULEY: Oh my god.
SAADI ALLAN, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: Oh my god.
(Footage ends)

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: All our laptops were here on the table and everyone's just sort of going hell-for-leather, trying to do their little last-minute things and it was just a huge buzz.

(Footage continues)
KYLIE EZART: Woo-hoo!
YARI MCGAULEY: Is it live?
KYLIE EZART: It's live, it's live, it's live!
YARI MCGAULEY: Let's check it, let's check it.
SAADI ALLAN: We're live.
YARI MCGAULEY: We're live. Emails are going...
(Footage ends)

CEDAR ANDERSON: The target was $70,000 and we reached it in 10 minutes. That's what we needed to manufacture and we're already there.

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: We overwhelmed the crowdfunding website: broke, you know, one of the biggest crowdfunding platforms in the world. I mean, 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?" And so I called Cedar up on the phone. He was in the middle of an ABC interview.

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: And it's a wonderful moment: "Oh, that's the team now." And they're like, "You, you can't! You're in the middle of an interview!" But it was just, it was, it was panic stations, you know.

CEDAR ANDERSON: Then there's people jumping around in the background going, "It's been five minutes and you've reached your target."

CEDAR ANDERSON: I was just like, "Oh, this is too exciting. I can't do this interview anymore."

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: In 15 minutes we'd raised US$250,000.

(Excerpt from Landline, ABC TV, 3 March 2015)
CEDAR ANDERSON (into phone): We have to make sure we can deliver. So we have to add some more time to it.
(Excerpt ends)

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: You know, the fastest campaign to ever hit $1 million, the fastest to get to $2 million. And we were just shocked, you know. We were really - we didn't even have time to pop the champagne. (Laughs)

(Excerpt from Sunrise, Channel 7)
ANDREW O'KEEFE (Sunrise, Ch. 7): They are setting a crowdfunding record, thanks to a revolutionary beehive innovation.
(Excerpt ends)

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Cedar was sort of talking about things going viral and I'm thinking, you know, "Darling, it's a beehive. You know, it's not a cute little kitten. It's... you know, it's probably not gonna go viral."

(Excerpt of web video, thebeevlog.com)
BILL CATHERALL: This week a new product to the internet and it's been creating a lot of buzz.
(Excerpt ends)

(Footage from WABC-TV, New York City)
ALEXANDRA BAHOU, PRESENTER (WABC-TV): It's the most significant beekeeping innovation in decades.
(Footage ends)

CEDAR ANDERSON: We were getting 50 new media enquiries every day.

(Cedar is translated into German on news segment, Galileo TV show)

CEDAR ANDERSON: I would wake up at five in the morning and be talking to ABC radio and then a little bit later I'd be talking to Washington Post and a little bit later I'd be talking to the New York Times.

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: I think it was three months of sleepless nights and thinking of all the things that had to happen and, you know, pulling in more and more people. I think in the first day we had eight or nine people working on the emails, just trying to answer them, and as they would reply the emails would come in, pouring in.

CEDAR ANDERSON: It was the craziest, busiest time that's ever happened to me; being pulled and stretched in every direction. And you know, also, you know, I experienced anxiety for the first time in my life. And at the same time, we're trying to have a baby. (Laughs)

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: We're halfway through the campaign and I just kicked everyone out. I'm like, "I need space. I need to nest". I thought I'd have a month, but our little darling boy came two weeks early. (Laughs)

(Footage of Cedar answering phone with baby in pouch)
CEDAR ANDERSON: Hey, Miras. You know how we shot the Flow Hive on the table, rotating?
(End of footage)

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: Crowdfunding, new baby, media attention, suddenly being in a very, very different world than what we were used to. You know, our lives completely changed.

CEDAR ANDERSON: By the end of the crowdfunding campaign we had orders from 140 different countries. We had US$12.2 million in orders. And... what a dream for an inventor.

(Home video footage, eight weeks after launch. Cedar looks slightly dazed)
CEDAR ANDERSON: Do you think we got enough orders?
(Footage ends)

SAADI ALLAN, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: That's the largest fully-funded campaign ever launched outside of the US.

(Home video footage, eight weeks after launch)
CEDAR ANDERSON: It's just been amazing the way all of you have jumped onboard and put in, you know, 120 per cent.
(End of footage)

DR SHONA BLAIR, MICROBIOLOGIST: The Flow Hive is great for attracting interest into beekeeping and the importance of bees, but if these hives become neglected because people then lose interest quite quickly, those hives could develop disease and that disease could spread to other colonies in the environment. And that could be very dangerous for beekeeping in this country.

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: We absolutely insist that you need to join your local bee group. You need to engage with the elders: you know, with the beekeepers that are already there, that have a wealth of knowledge. And it's really important to learn what you need to do to look after your hive.

(Excerpt of web video, thebeevlog.com)
BILL CATHERALL: After looking over the patent and doing some thinking, I have to say I'm not a fan.
(End of excerpt)

CEDAR ANDERSON: We've got a whole bunch of people really excited about it and we've got another whole bunch of people that are, that are really trying to slam us.

(Excerpt of web video, thebeevlog.com)
BILL CATHERALL: This Flow Hive product feeds into that consumer mindset of "take, take, take."
(End of excerpt)

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: Yeah, "battery farming for bees" is quite funny or, "bee slaves", I think, we've heard as well.

CEDAR ANDERSON: And of course, then, feelings of anxiety come up of, "What are we gonna do? How are we gonna deal with this?" And in the end we decided it was best to do nothing.

DR SHONA BLAIR, MICROBIOLOGIST: There are a small group of beekeepers in this country who use a method they call "natural beekeeping" and they're not particular fans of the Flow Hive system.

HARRY BROWN, NATURAL BEEKEEPER: Great invention, a clever idea, but for the bees to build their own comb is very important. They can build the cells the size that they need.

(Footage of Harry Brown leading beekeeping class)
HARRY BROWN: So it's a little bit harder than harvesting out of a Flow Hive or a conventional Langstroth hive. It's... you have to be more careful. It's slower.
(Footage ends)

HARRY BROWN, NATURAL BEEKEEPER: So things like the plastic in the hive we are a bit worried about. Who wants to live in a plastic environment, you know?

CEDAR ANDERSON: On one hand we are putting something artificial into a beehive. But in doing so we're getting a very useful, gentle way to harvest honey from a beehive.

(Footage of Cedar pointing at factory floor)
CEDAR ANDERSON: This is where the injection moulding's happening. They're making frames down over here.
(End of footage)

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: So after the crowdfunding finished, you know, we had a whole new set of problems: that we had to deliver these products. We had I think 24,500 orders sitting there, waiting for somebody to deal with them. So all the money that we've raised is: we don't really know what the profit margin is.

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: There's been a huge logistical exercise that's still going on, not only to manufacture the various things in Brisbane and so on, but for them to be assembled and boxed and packaged and sent to people all around the world.

(Footage of Stuart leaning against wrapped stack of boxed Flow Hives)
STUART ANDERSON: First pallet-load on its way.
(End of footage)

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Cedar has always been the type of guy who actually doesn't really know what day it is. You know, he just lives moment to moment.
Now he's running this big business. And he has to be at meetings on time, which he sometimes still doesn't quite get to. (Laughs)

RADHA NICHOLSON, MOTHER: Stress is probably a new word in Cedar's vocabulary. It's not something that he's experienced before.

CEDAR ANDERSON: All of a sudden they're telling me I have to have an office. And, "Oh, I don't want an office," you know. That's my worst nightmare. But OK, we need an office, so we've got an office now. And now they want me to go to the office. And, um... (laughs) so it's this steep learning curve of: "OK, what do we need to run a company?"

(Footage of meeting)
COLLEAGUE 2: We've had this massive event, which is a huge amount of work to process in a very short time and then, parallel to that, we're trying to build, you know, we're trying to say, "Hey, what is our ongoing business model?"
(Footage ends)

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: Yeah, it's really difficult, I think, for Cedar to go from, you know, trying to conserve resources and money so much for, you know, just for the sake of not affecting our environment and our planet anymore, to having to, (laughs) you know, run this multi-million-dollar business and spend, spend, spend.

CEDAR ANDERSON: I don't like to be a consumer, right. So then when part of the team is saying, "Look, we need new computers, we need this, we need that"...

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: We need new gear. We need to get proper equipment because if you don't, you know, like, just every second counts and, you know, very inefficient if you're working on an old and slow computer.

CEDAR ANDERSON: I'm like, "What? I've never brought a new computer in my life. You can't have a new computer. What are you talking about?"

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: So there's really been no change for him, although I do think he went out and bought a new pair of boots the other day, which is a first for Cedar. (Laughs)

(Footage of Cedar with Kylie and their baby)
CEDAR ANDERSON: We only charged a very small amount of shipping.
KYLIE EZART: Looking like you're going to get on time? (To baby) Possum, little possum.
CEDAR ANDERSON: We will be just on time.
(End of footage)

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: He's just throwing himself into being... yeah, the head of this business. And he just keeps on going and going and going until you're sort of, "OK, it's time to have a break. It's time to actually... we might have to be like everyone else and have a weekend." (Laughs) Yeah.

(Footage of Cedar and colleagues holding a meeting on veranda)
CEDAR ANDERSON: So how about we put the words on there and we provide them a little kit with a piece of sandpaper? (To colleagues) How did we ever get anywhere?
(End of footage)

CEDAR ANDERSON: I've been here in the shed for years, just working on my own. And now I've got, you know, 20 amazing people to work with. But that's a real stretch. I'm not used to calling the shots. I'm not used to managing people. I'm not used to telling people what to do. And, you know, it's something that doesn't come naturally in that I'm being forced to learn in a hurry.

SAADI ALLAN, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: I don't think Cedar and Stuart are really gonna change their lifestyle.

SAADI ALLAN, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: The money has never really been the thing for them. They've got bigger ambitions than money.

(Footage of Cedar and Stuart in shed)
CEDAR ANDERSON: So I'm just going to make that slightly shorter, then.
(End of footage)

CHRIS ANDERSON: Cedar and Stuey are still driving their old Hilux utes and they're running them still on vegetable oil, which is what they've done for quite a long time now. So I don't think you'll change those guys, no matter what you do.

CEDAR ANDERSON: 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 the way if it was threatening our relationship.

STUART ANDERSON, FATHER: Yeah. That's a big thing to say but I feel the same.

CEDAR ANDERSON: You know, Stu to me has been the best Dad ever. Still is.

(Footage of Mirabai playing family piano at family gathering)
MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: I've had people go, "Oh, you're working with your family." Like, "Ooh, watch out." And I'm like, "Well, I think my family is different." We love each other enough and we have the ability to communicate well enough that if there was ever an issue, it would get talked about.

(Footage of family at dinner table. Cedar is holding his baby son)
CEDAR ANDERSON: So many years of family having to keep this a secret: a toast to finally being able to tell the world.
(End of footage)

CEDAR ANDERSON: It is a big family project, where we've involved everybody from uncles to brothers, my grandfather, my sisters, cousins. (Laughs)

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: It just hits me every now and again: I'm just like, "Oh my gosh! Cedar, look what you just did. Can you believe that?"

CEDAR ANDERSON: It's a total rollercoaster. It's euphoric. Even now I pinch myself and it still doesn't feel real. You know, it's funny. I don't feel like a millionaire at all. I feel still the same as I always was.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: I did ask Cedar the other day: like, "Darling, is there anywhere in the world you'd like to travel? You know, we could go travelling somewhere." And he's like, "Hmm. I'd really like to go to Fraser Island." (Laughs) I was like, "That's do-able, seeing it's only a couple of hours up the road. (Laughs) We'll go there in our ute."

END CAPTIONS:
The Flow Hive recently won silver for best invention at the APIMONDIA beekeepers' conference in South Korea.

(Footage of colleague in a protective suit catching a wild swarm of bees from a tree.)
CEDAR ANDERSON: All right. That's got 'em.
COLLEAGUE: And what about this mass that's on the top there?
CEDAR ANDERSON: Just put the lid on now, really. Try and brush them away so you don't squash them.
COLLEAGUE: Just on the edges? The middle bit's all right?
CEDAR ANDERSON: Yeah, the middle's fine. It's just around that rim. Lovely. Swarm in a box.
(Footage ends)

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Living on the smell of an oily rag and working in his shed, Cedar Anderson with the help of his father, Stuart, came up with the concept of the Flow Hive. They now face the challenge of running a multimillion-dollar company.

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CAROLINE JONES, PRESENTER: Hello I'm Caroline Jones. One of the most popular programs we've ever brought you was about a revolutionary beehive, and the father and son team who invented it. Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart were living on the smell of an oily rag when their invention took the world by storm. Almost overnight they became multi-millionaires. And their success was crowned this year when they won the most prestigious prize at Australia's Good Design Awards. But it was not an easy transition from a simple life tinkering in their shed to running a complex international company. Tonight we re-visit their story.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: My grandfather kept bees, my father had bees, we had bees as a kid.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: We used to pull apart the beehives using my mum's old hat and veils and, and rubber gloves and gaffer tape and so on around their socks and there's me and my brother Chris getting the honey out and they'd get so ferocious that I'd just have to stand back, you know. I thought there must be a way just to tap honey straight out of the hive without opening the hive and that is more gentle on the bee.

CEDAR AND STUART: That's the first drop so its pouring in. It's pouring in! You can see the honey pouring out there That is amazing. This is the first successful attempt to get honey out of a box without opening the hive

SUNRISE (TV): Are you surprised that you had this incredible response?

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: The media interest was massive, it was all over the world.

ABC AMERICA: Here to tell us about a new beehive that makes harvesting honey a synch

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: And it was then we realised that this was actually really big, this was big, and we had to move really fast. We had invented the beekeeper's dream. The idea of having a nine to five office job was just frightening. To me freedom is, you know, being able to do what I'm inspired to do. It's being able to work on inventions, whenever I have a, an idea. If I sit on the toilet I look at the toilet roll and I go, "How is that dispenser working? Oh, okay, why didn't they do it differently" you know. And, and that's what I did when I looked in a beehive, it's like how does that all work, how do the bees work, how can we do it differently? How can we do it better?

RADHA NICHOLSON, CEDAR'S MOTHER: When Cedar gets an idea, he's utterly tenacious. He really believes that if the human mind has worked something out he can too

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: I don't think anyone really ever told him what he had to do or that he had to pursue and a certain career, his upbringing allowed him to, you know, nurture his own natural curiosity and follow his own instincts.

(Excerpt from A Big Country 1983)
A whole new wave of Nimbin pilgrims are still keen to discover an alternative to the consumptive society, a way of surviving with little. After the last festival, many stayed, formed communes, raised their children.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: I met, my wife to be, Radha, at a healing festival which is, where everyone goes away with tropical ulcers and all sorts of sicknesses for those sort of healing festivals. She was part of the group up here in Northern New South Wales that wanted to form a community.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: All the founders of our community decided to do something different and I'm one of the children from there. It was a fantastic way to grow up. I just loved it. And it was, it's like a, its own little village really where everybody knows everybody and it was freedom for us, three hundred and sixty acres of, of forest and, and houses and places to play, swimming in the creek.

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER : Cedar was such a dreamer when he was little, you know, it would take him half an hour to walk ten minutes because he was, he was always lost a bit in his own little world. He's always kind of just walked to his own groove.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: We didn't have TV and so we'd invent all sorts of things to do for fun. We built this electric shock machine. I can remember it was a hit amongst all of us kids, we'd, we'd join hands and sit around in a circle and hold onto these terminals and be getting this ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: My Dad was the, the mechanic and the fix-it guy. He would rig up the whole power system, so turbine in the creek, solar panels, batteries. Neither of my parents did criticism, so there was this sense of encouragement all the time. that really gave me a sense of I can do anything, this sense of not afraid to have a go.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Everywhere we would go together he would want to help people. Like, you know, we'd turn up at someone's house and their dishwasher would be broken and he'd just always have the time of day to fix it.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: Somehow I grew up not in that rat race of having to have a, a nine-to-five job. And that's allowed me basically to put time into this Flow Hive invention.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: Ten years ago Cedar had this idea, "Come on, we must be able to get honey from a beehive without opening it and extracting and stressing the bees and everything." And at the time I thought whoa, you know, that, that is a big ask.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: For years I tried to get honey out of honeycomb cells that were fully formed. So casting piston plungers that went down cells

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: And to my surprise, really I was surprised that, that Cedar went away and started making them and so there was stage after stage after stage, of inventing this thing

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: One morning I remember clearly waking up and going, "Oh, it doesn't have to be honeycomb cells all the time. It can be move apart and be not honeycomb cells when it's time to drain the honey".

MIRABAI NICHOLSON- MCKELLAR, SISTER: Cedar sat there by hand cutting some of those prototypes painfully cutting them out, you know, 'cos that was, you know, the cheapest way to do it.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: After a few strong coffees one morning Stu goes, "Oh, how about instead of in the horizontal direction we move it like that?" And straightaway I dropped everything.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: Yeah, amazing.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: I was like "oh".

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: Their minds spark off each other and there's this really beautiful connection when they're working. Looking at what things worked, didn't work and they're off and they're just like da, da, da, da, da, and you go: "Um, guys, I need just, ha - oh, I'll just leave you to it".

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: Cedar lives really humbly, he lives on this, this big bush block right next to the ocean, um, near Byron Bay and, you know, it's probably a good fifteen, 20 minutes' drive over rough corrugated roads. And, and just living really in a, in a shed essentially which has, half of the shed's devoted to beekeeping and his little inventing space there. And then the other half is, is the house the he shares with his partner I think over the years he's, he's tried to add some mod cons to it, a dishwasher.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: I was borrowing money off family and friends. I was, I was doing just the odd jobs, just enough to pay the bills, but my main focus would just be on the invention.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: I think there were times where I was wondering whether it would be successful, you know, and sort of how long we could keep going if it wasn't.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: My dad helped fund the prototypes and the patents which, you know, made it possible for Cedar and I to move ahead without running 'round the countryside looking for money.

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: So the Flow Hive is a frame or a honeycomb matrix as such built out of plastic, when the cell is filled with honey and capped off by the bees a lever's turned and the cell splits and the honey then drains down through, the channel that that makes out a tube into a jar at the bottom.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: We finally had a prototype in the hive that we really hoped would work and it was time to test this invention. The bees had actually built onto our prototype, which was exciting, and it was time to turn what was a, a socket and spanner on the outside of the hive and see if it actually worked.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: Wow - just starting to flow down the tube, that's the first drop so its pouring in, its pouring in, hooray, excellent it's really pouring in. Look at the height of it, ya, I think we've done it. That's incredible. It's just streaming out of the trough at the bottom. Look at it filling the jar. It's just pouring in.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: and we just ...

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: We just laughed didn't we? Just unbelievable.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: People say inventors forget everything when they see their invention work for the first time, they forget the whole world around them. I just remember lying back on the grass and going, you know.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: Wow, we've done it.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: We've done it. So we had the invention. Now it's how do we get it to market?

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: Even though we'd grown up as hippy children playing it the forest and that we'd come from that background, we're not against technology. Cedar and Stu both wanted to use crowdfunding to, to fund the project rather than get investors. And so crowdfunding basically is where you, you know, approach the world and put forward a video saying, "This is my idea, this is what I wanna make, will you support it, donate or purchase?"

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Before the crowdfunding campaign began I actually found out I was pregnant. I think it just sort of gave him a bit of a kick up the butt really as well, "Okay, well, we've gotta do this crowdfunding thing now, you know, we've gotta do it before this baby comes".

CHRIS ANDERSON, BROTHER: Cedar was thinking sort of on a worldwide level from the word go.

CHRIS ANDERSON, BROTHER: And he had our, our sister Miribai on deck. She is a professional filmer and so she did a bunch of the videos.
MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER: We didn't know, it's like, "Oh, maybe it is just some crazy idea from hippies on the North Coast". We had no idea it would go to the level it did.

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: We were hoping to raise $70,000 to set up a bigger tool in the factory.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Cedar and Stu were actually in Canberra to do the media launch so I called in some friends who were helping out to have our little launch here at our kitchen table at headquarters. All our laptops were here on the table and everyone's just sort of going hell for leather trying to do their little last minute things and it was just a huge buzz.

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: 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?" And so I called Cedar up on the phone, he was in the middle of an ABC interview.

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: And it's a wonderful moment, "Oh, that's the team now" And they're like, "You, you can't, you're in the middle of an interview" but it was just, it was, it was panic stations.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: There's people jumping around in the background going, "It's been five minutes and you've reached your target". I was just like, "Oh, this is too exciting, I can't do this interview anymore".

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: In 15 minutes we'd raised two hundred and fifty thousand US dollars. The fastest campaign to ever hit a million dollars, the fastest to get to two million dollars, and we were just shocked, you know, we were really - we didn't even have time to pop the champagne.

MEDIA: They are setting a crowd funding record thanks to a revolutionary beehive innovation

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: We were getting 50 new media enquiries every day. I would wake up at five in the morning and be talking to ABC radio and then a little bit later I, I'd be talking to Washington Post and a little bit later I'd be talking to the New York Times.

STAFF: This is a one liner. Ok go do the one liner. This is about freezing temperatures

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: It was the craziest, busiest time that's ever happened to me and being pulled and stretched in every direction. Also, you know, I experienced anxiety for the first time in my life and, at the same time, we're trying to have a baby.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: We're halfway through the campaign and I just kicked everyone out. I'm like, "I need space, I need to nest" and, um, I thought I'd have a month, but our little darling boy came two weeks early.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: Crowdfunding, new baby, media attention, um, suddenly being in a very, very different world than what we used to you know, our lives completely changed.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: By the end of the crowdfunding campaign we had orders from a hundred and forty different countries, we had 12.2 million US dollars in orders. What a dream for an inventor

SAADI ALLAN, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: And that's the, the largest fully funded campaign ever launched outside of the US.

DR SHONA BLAIR, MICROBIOLOGIST: The Flow Hive is great for attracting interest into beekeeping and the importance of bees but if these hives become neglected because people lose interest quickly those hives could develop disease and that disease could spread to other colonies in the environment and that could be very dangerous for bee keeping in this country.

MIRABAI NICHOLSON-MCKELLAR, SISTER : We absolutely insist that you, you need to join your local bee group, you need to engage with, with, with the elders, you know, with the beekeepers that are already there that have a wealth of knowledge and it's really important to learn what you need to do to look after your hive.

BLOGGER: After looking over the patent and doing some thinking I have to say I am not a fan.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: we've got a whole bunch of people really excited about it and we've got another whole bunch of people that are, that are really trying to slam us.

BLOGGER: This flow hive product feeds into that consumer mindset of take take take

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: "Battery farming for bees" is, is quite funny or, er, "bee slaves" I think we've heard as well.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: Of course then feelings of anxiety come up of, "What are we gonna do? How are we gonna deal with this?" and, um, in the end we decided it was best to do nothing.

DR SHONA BLAIR, MICROBIOLOGIST: There are a small group of beekeepers in this country who use a method they call natural beekeeping and they are not particularly fans of the flow hive system

HARRY BROWN, NATURAL BEEKEEPER: Great invention, a clever idea, but for the bees to build their own comb is very important. They can build the cells the size that they need.
So things like the plastic in the hive we are a bit worried about, who wants to live in a plastic environment?

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: On one hand we are putting something artificial into a beehive, but in doing so we're getting a very useful, gentle way to harvest honey from a beehive.

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: So after the crowdfunding finished, you know, we had a whole new set of problems, that we had to deliver these products, we had I think twenty-four-and-a-half thousand orders sitting there waiting for somebody to deal with them. So all the money that we've raised is, we don't really know what the profit margin is.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: It's been a huge logistical exercise that's still going on, not only to manufacture the various things in Brisbane and so on, but for them to be assembled and boxed and packaged and, and sent to people all around the world.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Cedar has always been the type of guy who actually doesn't really know what day it is, you know, he just lives moment to moment. Now he's running this big business and he has to be at meetings on time, which he sometimes still doesn't quite get to.

RADHA NICHOLSON, MOTHER: Stress is probably a new word in Cedar's vocabulary; it's not something that he's experienced before.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: All of a sudden they're telling me I have to have an office and, "I don't wanna an office" you know, that's my worst nightmare but okay, we need an office, so we've got an office now and now they want me to go to the office. And, um [laughs] so it's this steep learning curve of, of, "Okay, what do we need to run a company?"

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: Yeah, it's really difficult I think for Cedar to go from, you know, trying to conserve resources and, and money so much for, you know, just for the sake of not affecting our environment and our planet anymore to having to, you know, run this multimillion dollar business and spend, spend, spend.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: I don't like to be a consumer, right, so then when part of the team is saying, "Look, we need new computers, we need this, we need that"

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: we need new gear, need to get proper equipment because if you don't every second counts and very inefficient if working on an old and slow computer

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: I'm like, "What, I've never brought a new computer in my life. You can't have a new computer. What are you talking about?"

YARI MCGAULEY, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: So there's really been no change for him, although I do think he went out and bought and new pair of boots the other day, which is a first for Cedar.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: we only charged a very small amount of shipping

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: He's just throwing himself into being the head of this business.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: I'm not used to calling the shots, I'm not used to managing people, I'm not used to telling people what to do and, you know, it's something that doesn't come naturally and that I'm being forced to learn in a hurry.

SAADI ALLAN, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: I don't think Cedar and Stu are really gonna change their, their lifestyle.

SAADI ALLAN, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE: The money has never really been the thing for them, they've got bigger ambitions than, than money.

CHRIS ANDERSON: Cedar and Stuey are still driving their old Hilux utes and they're, they're running them still on vegetable oil, which is what they've done for quite a long time now. I don't think you'll change those guys no matter what you do.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: It's been amazing thing to work with my dad. To me the most important thing is that that relationship stays strong.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: To me I'd throw it all the way it was threatening our relationship.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: Yeah, that's a big thing to say but I feel the same.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: Stu to me has been the best dad ever, still is. It is a big family, project where we've involved everybody from uncles to brothers, my grandfather, my sisters, cousins.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: It just hits me every now and again, I'm just like, "Oh my gosh, Cedar look what you just did. Can you believe that?" I did ask Cedar the other day, like, "Darling, is there anywhere in the world you'd like to travel? You know, we could go travelling somewhere" and he's like, "Hmmm, I'd really like to go to Fraser Island". I was like, "That's do-able, seeing it's only a couple of hours up the road. We'll go there in our ute".

BABY JARLI: bees

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: It's funny, people often say to me, wow, your life just changed overnight and I can look at that and go that's totally true

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: Everything's changed and nothing's changed. Except I'm very tired.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: So we had about 25,000 orders to fulfill from the crowd funding campaign and that created what was kind of chaos.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: I can't say it was a smooth sailing with the manufacturing because we were putting everyone under pressure to try and get done what we crazily had said during the crowd funding time - yeah, we'll just deliver by December - yeah, sure, you know we had no idea.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: We managed to fulfill them finally in April this year which was a tremendous relief. So we have about 35 staff locally and three factories, two in Brisbane, one in Portland Oregon, and six or seven warehouses around the world, all stocked up so we can get product to people quite quickly now.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: I'm working a lot harder than I would like to actually. It's eight days a week at the moment. An office job just isn't me so we had to do something that was a bit different to a normal office, so we've got this beautiful house up on the hill, it's a really nice environment and it's more like a home where family and friends are doing all the things necessary in order to grow this amazing company. It's great, we can run the office how we like. We don't have to wear shoes. The only time I've worn a suit is when we won the Good Design Awards and I had to borrow a suit and jump up on stage to receive that award.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: After 15 years of living in a shed here on the property we've now been able to afford to move into this beautiful house.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: Life for me was always good. I don't need super yachts and pools full of champagne. I'm still driving my old Hi-Lux and I'm still running it off old frying oil from the chip shop.
KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: It's all about how you define luxury, isn't it. Because our life before was luxury. Look at where we live, it's amazing.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: There's all of this chaos and stress going on in the business world to try and get everything delivered yet you come home and it's 'dada' and it just melts your heart and brings me right back to the present.

STUART ANDERSON, CEDAR'S FATHER: Money's made life a little bit easier. My partner Michelle has a new car, her old one was pretty crappy, so yeah. I guess life's the same but different. Our relationships, you know, the people I love, are all the same.

BABY JARLI: Bees, bees

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: Jarli, he's just learnt how to say bees.

KYLIE EZART, PARTNER: He loves bees. He sees bees everywhere.

CEDAR ANDERSON, INVENTOR: He seems naturally interested in mechanics and machines. He loves being under the bonnet of the car, tracing where the wires go. Perhaps he's another generation of inventors. Still haven't been to Fraser Island but we'll get there soon.

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CAROLINE JONES, PRESENTER: Hello I'm Caroline Jones. One of the most popular programs we've ever brought you was about a revolutionary beehive, and the father and son team who invented it. Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart were living on the smell of an oily rag when their invention took the world by storm.

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Where would we bee without them with audio description

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Uploaded by Agriculture in Education on 2016-04-20.

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The Death Of Bees Explained – Parasites, Poison and Humans