I think that it is too good to be true from the point of view of cost....
Yes, it would certainly be a big capital investment in anyone's language.
To some extent though, could this not be balanced against reduced labour costs in the longer term? And the need for a truck and lifting gear to load supers, transport to your honey shed, then hours of extracting and then having to take it all back to the hives so they can clean it out etc.
One other thing occurs to me; if you aren't destroying significant amounts of wax by uncapping and damaging comb which will then require repair by the bees, will you not get a greater honey yield by getting better utilisation of nectar that would otherwise have been used to make new wax? (One possible unintended consequence here could be a future shortage of cappings wax to make new foundation.
I guess if you've already got a significant investment in existing equipment, it would be bordering on foolish to abandon it for a new and as-yet, not totally proven technique.
I'm not commercial, never will be, I have an interest in 5 hives and that's all it will ever be. It's attractive to me as a hobbiest, for a number of reasons, not least of which being, as I now keep bees on a small suburban block, that I don't have to disturb my bees at the time of year they're at their tetchiest, to harvest the honey.
Whilst some would take home a message from the ad that you don't need to do any of that nasty getting inside hives thing, we all know that's not true but if possible, I'd prefer to limit most of my hive fettling in this suburban location to the Spring/early Summer when they're not so irritable. Even so, with just my 2 "home hives", it's a sizeable investment to get past the Domestic Finances Manager without her veto.
I did start to crunch the numbers but, even assuming that the frames would last 10 years, it was clear that making a business case to invest was going to be impossible. That by the way was assuming a startup, which would not already have made a significant investment in equipment.
Hobbyists typically do not have to rationalize invests from a business point of view so that those serously considering the purchase of these innovative honey frames is an entirely different "ball game". If a hobbyist wants to start out with a couple of hives, one might say, "Well, about $400 for each hive, $150 or so for each colony of bees is, say, $550 so adding the Flow Frames makes it about $900 - $1800 for two hives is not bad. And, look at the convenience plus no extraction equipment needed which might be an effective saving of $200 or $300". That's a fair argument, I think.
For myself, the numbers exercise is entirely different. First, I already harvest during my weekly or biweekly inspections so that, first, a smaller extractor is adequate, second, I have honey to sell earlier, three, I need only one honey super for each hive and, four, the bees make a lot more honey which is due, in part, to not having to build as much honey comb. Hence, the FlowHive frames would save me carrying frames to the extractor, spinning up the extractor and returning empty frames to the hive but I still have to get the honey to my truck. No matter how I wiggle the numbers, I cannot get that saving to me to be worth $50,000 plus shipping plus the care of the frames. Even if the frames last ten years, the $5000, or so, per year still is not worth it. Especially when there are so many unanswered questions around reliability and service life.
It depends on one's objectives. For hobbyists, the numbers could be quite attactive. For commercial operations, I do not think it can work. For me, it will not work.
