Automatic and continuous recording of the health of bee colonies

erich ward / unsplash

Modern beekeeping means stress for our bees. As a beekeeper, the bee colony must be inspected regularly. This involves opening and checking the hive. The bees perceive this process as an attack. Even hours later, you can see that the bees are still confused. Our experience in beekeeping and embedded systems has led us to the following project idea.

Our aim is to reduce interventions in the beehive. The idea is to use sensors and data to find out when and where intervention is necessary. As part of this project, we want to conduct basic research into suitable sensor types, the various sensor models and the processing and presentation of the collected data in the context of achieving the goal.

The central point of data collection, storage and processing is a Raspberry Pi. This is suitable for connecting a wide variety of sensors. In the first phase, the focus is on the data collection infrastructure in order to be able to evaluate the quality of the data collected. Building on this, we carry out a test run in the next phase. We test an empty beehive with the sensors. In the subsequent phase, we install the resulting prototypes in a beehive and collect data. At the same time, we use our beekeeping knowledge to carry out manual inspections as a control and compare them. We use the findings to evaluate the design of our prototypes.

Through our project, we are looking at the different aspects of data literacy. The focus is on data collection using sensors, data storage on the Raspberry Pi, processing and visualization using software developed by us and the analysis and evaluation of data quality.

And here is the student group in their own words (German):