Smart Hive for Beekeepers _ General Questions

[Ryan_Research]

Hi,

I am a graduate student at Purdue University. I am interested in working with beekeepers, especially hobbyists and part-time beekeepers, to develop a smart, multisensory beehive that uses various types of data (e.g., video, audio, temperature, weight, and so on) to estimate the state of a bee colony and help them monitor their hives continuously. It would be very helpful if you can share your experience by answering the following questions:

1- How would you describe your experience with the beehive you are currently using?

a. Likes: What are some of the things, if any, you LIKE about your beehive?
b. Dislikes: What are some of the things, if any, you DISLIKE about the beehive?
c. Improvements: Anything you think should be improved?

2- Imagine if you were the designer of this intelligent beehive:

a. What will you include in it to better assist you with the beekeeping practice?
b. What do you want to monitor, and what data is helpful?

Thank You in Advance!

[TheHoneyPump]

Some established systems to look at as place to start for research and reference of what is already out there:

Www.broodminder.com

Www.beecounted.org

www.mellisphera.com

www.arnia.co.uk

americanbeejournal.com/events/fourth-international-bee-and-hive-monitoring-conference-goes-virtual/

Youtube, the conference presentations are slow to being uploaded, though are progressing:  search for keywords -

FOURTH 4th INTERNATIONAL BEE AND HIVE MONITORING CONFERENCE 

[BeeMaster2]

Ryan; l,
Welcome to Beemaster.
Bee sure to read the bylaws.
Good luck with your project.
Jim Altmiller was

[yes2matt]

FOURTH 4th INTERNATIONAL BEE AND HIVE MONITORING CONFERENCE

I'm gonna try to go next year.  Missoula? bee-autiful country!

to the OP:
I am a back-yarder but I maintain some out-apiaries. Right now and thru winter I would like to know brood box weight. Also cluster audio. In spring-summer I would like some insight on swarm-prep and queen status (audio or scent signature?).  Just for fun I would like an entrance cam all year. and a weather station for the apiary, if I'm tracking super weights.  If I could get machine-analysis of pollen color at the entrance so I know when certain flows hit, that would be cool.

[Michael Bush]

I'm not willing to give up interchangeability and standards but if those were not issues, I would like to see thicker wood at the frame rest as this often gets broken or chewed out.  The British Standard has a nice system with a wider frame rest and thicker wood there which also makes the handle.  They are a bit easier to make and the frame rest lasts better.  I like light weight boxes (both empty and full) and I like good insulation.  But the foam ones don't seem to breathe very well and have condensation issues.

[little john]

I run an experimental apiary in which various beehive designs are put through their paces, and so my own personal likes and dislikes are very much a 'work in progress' - but - in recent years I've become suitably impressed with the 11x11 Gallup frame, and so I'm currently in the process of constructing a range of hives within which to further test this rather interesting size of frame.  Indeed, it may not be a complete coincidence that in 1872 Lorenzo Langstroth also considered altering his brood box dimensions to a size similar to that of Gallup (so I'm in hallowed company) - but by then commercial manufacturers such as Root had already established their markets.
 
But - no electronic sensors in this apiary - which is very much a 'hands-on' operation, reliant solely upon the Mk.I eyeball (no batteries required ...).
LJ

[van from Arkansas]

Mr. Ryan, I am a hobbyist with 20 max hives in my backyard.  I have 3 each hive scales, wifi with contact/touch sensor.  Download of hive weight and temp/humidity takes about 1-2 seconds, then uploaded to the cloud for graphs.  Weight sensor via static gismo?

The cons: weight variations and Apple compatibility vrs android.  I could not tare, zero out the scale as Apple operating system prohibited or limited programming.  It is hard to find an accurate scale, within say a pound as a hive may weigh 150 plus pounds.

I considered an in hive audio device linked to my iPhone, but decided not to buy because when a hive swarms, yes this is easily detected by audio device but happens so fast, within minutes that a swarming signal sent to my iPhone was of little use.

The temperature with humidity probe linked to my iPhone and stored in the cloud was confusing to me with variations.  The bees would propolis, glue the sensor, although the sensor was protected with #16 wire, the bees quickly placed glue over the wire screen.  This was an inframe sensor.

The pros were the weight, temp and humidity were recorded every 10 minutes for each of 3 hives and the data was instant download to my iPhone, then to the cloud, then a graph was constructed which is  totally awesome IF the data is accurate.

I will try to post a pic of a graph and a person can see for their self.

Van

[van from Arkansas]

Note the large drop in weight, 20 pounds, in error in May.  This hive was not robbed, just the variations in weight that occurred randomly rendering the hive scale useless to me.

[van from Arkansas]

With details on graph,