Development of Internet of Things concept for Precision Beekeeping

Abstract

Implementation of precision apiculture methods into practice is highly depended on availability and cost-effectiveness of honey bee monitoring equipment. Expenses of monitoring system installation and maintenance activities also should be minimized. In order to successfully predict different bee colony states like: swarming, determine nectar collection activity and health of honey bees both in active and passive wintering period, minimum hive parameters that should be monitored are temperature and mass. This research presents conceptual design of Internet of Thing approach for the beekeeping. As well honey bee colony temperature monitoring system based on local wireless sensor network together with GSM/GPRS external interface for packet-based communication with remote server on the Internet is developed. Logical topology of the local network is star with one central module. The hive group consists of 10 units. Each hive in the group is equipped with integral temperature sensor chip (±0.4°C accuracy), low power microcontroller and radio frequency (RF) transceiver module. All components are powered by alkaline cell battery, which can provide energy for one year minimum of autonomous operation with 10-minute data logging interval. The central module is also placed on one of the hives and consists of temperature sensor, RF and GSM/GPRS modules, photovoltaic cell array, battery, charge controller and minimal user interface for operational status reporting. The system allows sensor data logging to local storage and periodic sending to a remote server for further detailed analysis in user web or mobile application.