Beekeeping seems to be undergoing a renaissance at the moment: ever since the announcement of the Colony Collapse Disorder a few years back, urban dwellers have either been planting bee friendly
flowers in their gardens or actually joining the beekeeping ranks themselves.
Location doesn’t seem to be a problem, with hives being kept in small gardens and on roof terraces overlooking the city below.
In order to be a beekeeper there are a number of essential tools, apart form the hive obviously, that need to be purchased. One well-known piece of equipment in the beekeeper’s toolkit is the smoker.
Available in various sizes in stainless steel or copper, the basic premise is that you place lit fuel (whether it be smoke cartridges, hessian sacking or twigs) inside the smoker and then use the bellow to puff the smoke out through the nozzle.
By directing the smoke towards the bees, it calms them down when the beekeeper comes to inspect the hive. The ‘modern day’ smoker was created in around 1875 and since then the design hasn’t changed much.
Is it time for a redesign? We think so.
The competition
Brief:
Redesign a piece of existing beekeeping equipment (such as the smoker) or design a completely new tool to add to the beekeeper’s toolkit that is user friendly, sustainable, easy to manufacture and bee friendly
Criteria:
Create a sketch, 3D CAD model or rendering of your concept with a brief description of how it works
Deadline:
30 July 2012
Submit:
Email your entries to {encode=”tanya@x3dmedia.com” title=”tanya@x3dmedia.com”}
Judging:
Judges include a panel of design professionals as well as experienced beekeepers
Prizes:
Not only will the winning design be made into a 3D physical prototype by the good people at IPF, but there are also a range of prizes up for grabs for the winner and two runners up, including having a stake in your very own beehive without actually getting your hands sticky through the British Beekeepers Association’s ‘Adopt a Beehive’ initiative.
Further prizes include a first prize of a NVIDIA Quadro 2000 graphics card by PNY, a Mid-range professional graphics solution with 1GB of GDDR5 memory for fast processing of complex models and scenes.
Meanwhile PNY have also offered a runner up prize of an NVIDIA Quadro 600, an entry-level professional graphics solution with 1GB of DDR3 memory.
The winning designs will be showcased here on develop3d.com and in the September issue of DEVELOP3D.
The British Beekeeping Association:bbka.org.uk
3D Printing Specialists IPF: ipfl.co.uk
Competition to design the ultimate modern beekeeping tool
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