AUTOMATED SYSTEM FOR BEE COLONY WEIGHT MONITORING

Abstract

Real time, continuous and remote monitoring of the honeybee colonies with application of information and communication technologies (ICT) is becoming increasingly frequent in industry and in a scientific research. Combination of ICT and beekeeping led to the development of the Precision Beekeeping approach. Successful implementation of the Precision Beekeeping system includes development of the bee colony monitoring hardware solution and computer software for data collection and further analysis. This paper describes developed and implemented bee colony monitoring unit for weight and temperature monitoring. Bee colony weight is one of the key metrics of the strength of a colony. Changes in weight can reflect the productivity rate of the colony, as well as its health and state. Developed monitoring system is based on Raspberry Pi Zero W single board computer with several connected sensors for bee colony temperature and environmental parameter monitoring. Weight is measured using single point load cell with possibility to measure weight up to 200kg, which is enough for the beehive measurements. Data transfer from the remote bee colony is provided by the external 3G router. For data storage and analysis cloud-based data warehouse is developed. Collected data is accessible in the web system with user friendly interface for data visualisation and reporting. Within this research scale calibration process is described and accuracy of the weighting is evaluated and possible challenges are discussed. Described monitoring system is developed within the Horizon 2020 project SAMS, which is funded by the European Union within the H2020-ICT-39-2016-2017 call. To find out more visit the project website https://sams-project.eu/.