A Quality and disease control system for beekeeping

Abstract

The most significant problems of beekeeping are threats that affect the viability of the bees and the safety risks of beehives, caused by environmental conditions, human interventions, animal attacks and diseases. Several solutions tried to offer sensory monitoring and protection mechanisms, using beehive surveillance camera kits or GPS-based tracking systems. Nevertheless, such systems are not accurate and cannot offer severity estimation and intervention recognition as a holistic approach. The proposed BeeQ project is a complete integrated solution for beehive security and quality control using sensors and low energy transponders placed in the beehive cells of the array. Furthermore, BeeQ incorporates data mining logic to evaluate threats and diseases and inform the beekeeper trough the BeeQ mobile application. The main challenges that beekeepers face and BeeQ aims to solve are: (i) Beehive theft, (ii) Bee health problems and colony mortality risks due to illnesses and varroa mite infection that leads to colony destruction, (iii) Extreme weather conditions that may lead to colony loses and extinction, (iv) Animal attacks, (v) Colony losses due to unfortunate farming practices and (vi) Production of high-quality products following production standards.