But the Flow Hive the Anderson family invented has become the crowd-funding sensation of the year, pulling in more than $4 million of support in less than a fortnight, with still a month of the campaign left to run, exceeding its original funding target by more than 6400 per cent and counting.

Stuart Anderson and his son Cedar Anderson travelled from their home near Lismore in northern NSW in mid-February to Canberra in the hope of drumming up additional media attention for their Flow design. After 10 years of tinkering in the shed, eating into savings, they hoped they would be able to raise enough attention to get a few hives into production. They needn't have worried.

After appearing in Fairfax publications, the story of the Flow hive was picked up around the world and has since been featured in publications including Forbes and Wired magazines, Cnet and most of Australia's leading print, radio and television news networks. Investors from around the world, but particularly the United States, have swamped their online funding page, leaving the pair scrambling to upscale their initial production plans.

The system, which allows bee keepers to extract honey from a hive without pulling it apart, has become one of the most successful international crowd funding campaigns in history on any platform since it was launched on the Indiegogo site on February 23, although several US-only campaigns for movies and video games have been larger.

 

Stuart Anderson said with more than 30 days to go, he wouldn't be surprised to see the final figure closer to $10 million.

"It's both exciting and there's a sense of responsibility that comes with it. I'm adjusting to being part of history, in a little way."

And while the pair is the toast of the internet at the moment, it wasn't always that way. A few short months ago, Stuart Anderson was struggling financially. Three years after leaving his job as a community worker in Lismore to concentrate on the hives, money had started to get tight.

"I was doing some contract work, I was eating into my savings and borrowing from family members and I don't like that, it's important to me to be able to stand on my own feet financially.  I have been skidding along the bottom for a while and it's a relief not to have money anxiety. It's not in our pockets yet by any means, there's a lot of work to do, but in terms of financial security it looks like I'll now be OK."

Having set up their company they are about to start production in Brisbane, but are already looking at possible overseas expansion to keep up with the massive demand for their product, but are also hopeful of keeping as much production as possible in Australia.

But of all the money, attention and instant fame that has turned their lives upside down, there's one piece of publicity the Andersons are most excited about.

"One thing I'm proud about of out of all that we've been featured on is getting the cover of Australia's premier beekeeping magazine, and for me that's very special."

The crowdfunding campaign ends on April 5, full details of which can be found at honeyflow.com