harvest FLO SHELF TM DTC-1 drain tube cover qty 4

Here is a great gift idea for your Honey that keeps bees. Soon it will be time to harvest left over winter honey, or the first nectar flows of spring.

This harvest FLO shelf TM drain cover tool keeps ants, bees and wasps out of the honey harvest flow from either a Australian "FLOW" or Chinese "Autoframe" style hives. Even though the shape and dimensions of the two different artificial honeycomb drain tubes are different, this 3D printed accessory fits both. The drain cover tool doesn't contact the honey during gravity only harvest. This tool honey works with either recap style mason jar lids or a user modified mason jar lid.

I developed this after my first harvest where I ended up with more than a dozen bees in each honey collection container. After some fruitless searching I determined that no off the shelf plumbing elbow was available, plus any type of conventional elbow increases the flow resistance due to the increased wetted flow area, hence the harvest time could be increased, and if the comb isn't fully capped, the flow can backup enough to cause internal honey leakage in hive, even just using the drain tube alone, much less adding any flow resistance with a plumbing elbow.

This drain cover tool can optionally be used in conjunction with vacuum assistance to speed the honey flow during initial opening, which can minimize internal flow backup if partially capped honeycomb exists, resulting in significant honey leakage inside the hive, causing a temporary exodus of worker bees. If used with vacuum, the honey will contact the drain cover tool, so proper cleaning before and after use are recommended.

Click this link for a video about this product

Click this link for a video showing vacuum assisted honey harvest

You will receive the following:

qty 4- Drain tube cover made by 3D printer out of ABS plastic

This listing does NOT include, any drain tube, harvest shelf or artificial honeycomb or other langstroth hive components which are shown in some of the listing photos.

This product has a patent pending, please contact me if you are interested in manufacturing and marketing this concept under a licensing agreement.

Designed and Manufactured in Dallas, TX by Stig O'DIY +/- Design

Note that this product is 3D printed using natural colored ABS, rather than injection molding. As a result the part you will receive has a layered appearance that makes some of cylindrical surfaces have a discretized coarse appearance which does not affect its intended function. The drain cover will not seal perfectly due to porosity in the layered print structure, however it will keep ants, bees and wasps out of the honey. The porosity will not adversely affect the vacuum assist capability either.

If for some reason you need a drain tube cover that has no porosity or is visually perfect or of a different color, this design is available on shapeways.com, just search for "harvest FLO SHELF TM drain tube cover" on the shapeways website. The shapeways.com part is made from nylon, colors other than white are dyed after build. The wall thickness of the shapeways.com version is 33% less, to make the part more affordable, as material weight is a cost driver.