Beekeeping inventor buzzed about win

A Northland inventor found a way to revolutionise beekeeping with his mobile honey harvester that is being showcased to the public for the first time.

Grant Engel’s creation, called Revolutionary Beekeeping, won the Launch NZ competition yesterday, and he took away $5,000 cash and an advertising package.

Engel is a dairy farmer who came up with the idea recently after he just started beekeeping.

“Basically I discovered the problems of harvesting and extracting honey,” he said.

With the invention, beekeepers can quickly put each hive frame through the machine and can extract about 1 ton of honey per day.

The inventor said his stainless steel harvester is a simple, manual system that will not break down.

Engel created about three prototypes before the final version that he said received a good response from commercial beekeepers who trialled it.

The traditional method involves lifting heavy honey boxes and transporting them to an extraction facility, which Engel said can be costly.

“Harvesting on-site seemed to be the next logical step for honey processing,” Engel said.

The Revolutionary Beekeeping device is usually $3500, but it is selling for $3250 during Fieldays.

Team Leader at Innovation Centre Tony Smith said the judges had a tough time deciding a winner for Launch NZ because everyone was worthy of winning.

“What is here on display at the moment is actually really high quality stuff,” Smith said.

The judges were looking for an agricultural innovation that solved a common problem and had potential to be successful on the market.

The winner of the Grassroots and Vodafone ICT Award competition was Steve Dawson with his Quad Bike GPS Monitoring System.

The invention can sense when a quad bike is overturned and automatically dial selected phone numbers to inform people of the potentially serious accident.

Young inventor Ayla Hutchinson, 13, won the James & Wells Intellectual Property Award for her Kindling Cracker invention.