Connected Beehives And Apiaries

Connected beehive

A connected hive consists of:

• 1 weight sensor: it allows to assess the state of the harvest, and to deduce the needs of the colony. When the hive body fills up, the hive should be expanded for the bees to continue to store honey and to not choose the path of swarming. In winter measuring the weight is useful to assess the remaining reserves and plan a possible feeding (with sugar water).

• A sound sensor enables to transmit internal noise, of the colony, or of potential aggressors (Woodpecker). Listening to the rustle is the equivalent of auscultation and provides information about the health of the swarm.

• An internal image sensor (in the upper space) provides a general picture of the activity inside (for educational use).

• An external image sensor (on the flight board) provides a picture of general foraging activities (for educational use).

• Internal humidity and temperature sensors

• A trigger allows remote control of the closure of the exit hatch (the night before the interventions of non-equipped staff: visit of the lift manufacturers on flat roofs for example)

Monitoring of the apiary:

The apiary has its own set of sensors for shared data with all hives:

• A sun sensor to correlate illumination, activity and harvest.

• External sensors for rainfall, humidity, wind and temperature,

• Edge monitoring sensors (malignancy alerts, thefts, ....)

The IT solution

Power is supplied by a solar panel and is stored in batteries. The central station provides:

• Connection management with the operator over a 4G connection 

• Data collection of hives identified as ”equipped hive”

• The establishment of a communication channel via Bluetooth with the interviewee hive (chosen by beekeeper)

• The transmission of warning data from the site.

The remote stations in the equipped hives allow:

• Managing the bluetooth communication with the central station

• The interrogation of the sensors

• The storage of alerts and extreme values.

The software used by the beekeeper provides access to decentralized functions in the apiary.

Implementation

The spirit of the project is:

• to use common business modules (Arduino, Raspberry).

• to deliver open source or freeware solutions.

• to assess beekeeping open-source resources available on the web (hives plan).

• to use materials provided by Fablabs and other third parties for prototyping.