Progress towards an Intelligent Beehive: Building an Intelligent Environment to Promote the Well-Being of Honeybees

Honeybees are not only important for their production of honey but also, and more fundamentally, they are almost certainly the most effective pollinators of crops. However, there is strong evidence that the honeybee is under threat. Various factors, including parasites, bacterial and fungal infectio...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Howard, Donald, Hunter, Gordon, Duran, Olga, Venetsanos, Demetrios
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Bacteria
beehive
Conferences
Design engineering
Electronics
Honey
honeybees
Inspection
intelligent sensor network
Monitoring
Parasites
Sensor systems
Sensors
Temperature measurement
Temperature sensors
well-being
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Summary:Honeybees are not only important for their production of honey but also, and more fundamentally, they are almost certainly the most effective pollinators of crops. However, there is strong evidence that the honeybee is under threat. Various factors, including parasites, bacterial and fungal infections and pesticides have been suggested as causes of this. In this project, we aim to promote bee well-being by encouraging bees to live more naturally, and propose an "intelligent beehive", equipped with an array of appropriate sensors, to allow the continuous monitoring of conditions in the hive in a non-invasive manner. In this paper, we discuss the issues surrounding bee welfare and decline, present our innovative hive designs and some preliminary results and analysis, concluding with future work we plan to carry out, collecting & analysing data from a range of hives equipped with a much broader range of sensors, including a discussion of our equipment and methodologies.
ISSN:2472-7571
DOI:10.1109/IE.2016.60