Looking for an easy job? Don’t go into honey-making! Imagine 500 bees—visiting two million flowers. That’s a lot of work, and it only makes one pound of honey!

Could it be true, then, that a new invention will make honey production almost automatic—at least for beekeepers? Inventors Stuart and Cedar Anderson say yes. The father and son come from Australia. They invented a high-tech honey maker called Flow Hive. The beehive looks like a little wooden house. Spouts come out of its side. Inside the wooden box, frames of 3-D printed, plastic honeycomb wait. (In the wild, bees would have made this honeycomb themselves out of wax.) Bees collect nectar from nearby fields. Back at the Flow Hive, the bees drop the nectar into the tiny boxes of plastic honeycomb.

Here’s where things get easy for beekeepers. Many find it difficult to act like honey burglars breaking into hives of stinging bees. But to harvest honey from Flow Hive, beekeepers just have to turn a simple tool. The tool splits open the honeycomb cells. The honey releases. It flows through a channel. Before the beekeeper knows it, the honey flows all the way to the bottom. Then it runs through the spouts into jars. The beekeeper doesn’t even have to open up the hive! After the honey is harvested, the beekeeper twists the tool again. The honeycomb locks together. Come on, bees! It’s ready for a refill!

That sounds more like a soda dispenser than a bee colony. Maybe that’s why so many beekeepers love the idea. But others aren’t so sure. They say that beekeepers should open their hives. That way they can make sure the colony still has a queen. They can check for harmful creatures like wax moths or mites.

Only time will tell whether Flow Hive lives up to its promises. Is this honey-maker good? Or is it too good to be true?