The majority of beekeepers are still using old and verified methods of beekeeping. For monitoring bee activity, they must often intrude on hives and physically check the condition of the colonies by taking out and checking every frame. With every interference a beekeeper upsets bees and consequently influences their health and yield.
The assignment of thesis is, to develop a prototype for monitoring bee activity which can be used to simplify beekeeper’s everyday tasks. With the help of system, a beekeeper could assess the health of families, activity of bees, reduce intrusions on hives, estimate when bees are ready to swarm, notice and prevent bee robberies.
This prototype enables temperature monitoring in a hive, it's mass, and surrounding temperature and moisture. System consists of two temperature sensors, one hygrometer, weigh scale, microcontroller ESP8266 with wireless connectivity and a server with database. All data are displayed locally on an accessible web page. With this system we wanted to present mainly a simple solution for bee activity monitoring, which enables a beekeeper to be more economical. The system is not intended to be used for research purposes but only for informative use in beekeeping.
The prototype was tested in season 2019 which was a bad beekeeping season for us. In a period of six months, we recorded no swarming, robbery, slaughter of bees and similar negative activities, which could be prevented with the system. Because of a lack of data, a concept of data processing and system development is showed in this master's thesis.
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