Apipulse - a system of comprehensive monitoring and notification about the state of bee colonies is designed for round-the-clock monitoring of the health of bee colonies according to various parameters. As a rule, most amateur beekeepers do not have enough time to maintain their hives on a weekly basis, while professional beekeepers, on the contrary, take a lot of time to maintain their large number of hives. Apipulse helps solve the problem of lack of time, since without additional effort you will always be aware of what is happening with the bees. This will give amateurs peace of mind and a guarantee of preserving bee colonies with a timely response, while professionals will save time on maintaining current bee colonies and will allow them to effectively expand their business.

A comprehensive monitoring and warning system about the health of bee colonies provides the beekeeper with the most complete information about what is happening inside the hive and in the apiary in general according to the following parameters:

- sound spectrum inside the hive. Bees are known to make certain sounds at low frequencies. The meaning of these frequencies has been studied quite well and allows us to determine not only what is currently happening in the hive, but also what may happen in the near future. For example, signs of swarming in bees appear several days before the swarm emerges. When bees are infected with the varroa mite (varroatosis), the bees begin to emit sounds at a strictly defined frequency, and they sound at a different frequency when the queen is lost.

- temperature and humidity inside the hive. As you know, a healthy family always tries to maintain a microclimate inside the hive with constant temperature and humidity. Based on the temperature and humidity inside the hive, experienced beekeepers can determine the health of the bee colony and take action to preserve the bee colonies.

- CO2 level inside the hive. So far, our sensors can detect increased CO2 levels by indirect signs - bees make sounds at a certain frequency when ventilating the hive, but development plans are to create a sensor that directly measures CO2 inside the hive.

- weight of the hive. Allows you to monitor honey gain or brood yield.

- shake/roll detection and built-in compass. In case of capsize

- location determination.

- perimeter control and video surveillance camera. The control unit provides for the connection of external devices such as a perimeter control controller based on the contact principle (wire around the perimeter of the apiary) or in a non-contact manner (motion sensor)

The Apipulse system for comprehensive monitoring and notification of the state of bee colonies was designed taking into account the fact that not all beekeepers are required to understand electronics. It is enough to install the sensors inside the hive, place the control unit on a small elevation (for example, on one of the hives) so that it is in the approximate geometric center of the hives with sensors, download and run the application. Then everything happens with minimal human intervention. It is enough to follow the instructions to register in the application, if you are a new user of the system, scan the QR code from the control unit and get full control over information about what is happening inside the hives and in the apiary as a whole.

Actually, the differences lie in their name, although there are some design features. First of all, the first of the listed sensors is the most compact and cheapest. It allows you to monitor sound and humidity inside the hive and runs for about 1 year on one small CR2025 coin cell battery. Temperature and humidity can tell any beekeeper a lot about the health of a bee colony or club during the winter.

The second and third of the listed sensors are structurally similar and are powered by two AAA pinky batteries, which allow this type of sensor to operate for up to 10 months, which is enough for a full, even the longest season for beekeepers. The sensors are larger in area but in height quite a bit higher than the simplest sensors, which also allows their installation in any place in the hive, including lowering between the frames. Both types of these sensors allow you to record and transmit sound to a cloud server, and in the application, in addition to visually displaying selected frequencies, the beekeeper can listen to 10 seconds of each hour of monitoring the hive.

This is an undoubted competitive advantage in the market. The third type of sensors contains additional sensors that allow you to determine the shaking or turning of the hive and its orientation to the cardinal points. Advanced beekeepers know that bees in the wild always have honeycombs oriented strictly along the magnetic poles, that is, from north to south, and they try to orient hives, which are essentially an artificial shelter for bees, also along the poles. Having a compass in the sensor will help you do this most accurately 😊

This is individual and depends on the needs of the beekeeper. All internal sensors are equipped with a strip with a QR code for easy reading of the sensor number and hive marking. The strip is long enough both to install the hive on the frames in any place, and to lower the sensor between the frames. The specially designed sensor housing allows you to install it almost anywhere in the hive without disturbing the hive structure and without fear that the hole for measuring humidity and sound will be blocked by bees.

The sensors communicate with the control unit (hub) via the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) protocol. The range of reliable signal reception depends on many factors, such as humidity and ambient temperature, the presence of obstacles, the height of the sensors and the receiving device, the orientation of the transmitting and receiving antennas and many other factors. From trial operation it turns out that the reliable reception zone is within 15 meters, the maximum range is about 25 meters. This means that the control unit (hub) must be installed closer to the geometric center of the apiary hives in which the sensors are located.

First of all, we recommend calling the support service of your mobile operator and asking whether the area where the apiary is located is at least within the 2G coverage area of ​​that operator. If the operator answers that they have some kind of coverage in this area, then you can purchase from us an additional antenna for the control unit (hub). The antenna can be either on the unit’s body, if the signal is “sometimes uncertain,” or remotely, if there is no signal. We can also supply an extension cable to the remote antenna in case it can be installed on a tree or taken to the roof of a farmer.

Firstly, it has not been scientifically proven that the frequencies at which the WiFi network operates are harmful to bees. Secondly, the sensors, which are located directly in the hives, operate using the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) protocol, which is orders of magnitude weaker in power than WiFi. In addition, the difference between this protocol and classic Bluetooth is that devices using this protocol communicate only to exchange data to save energy.

Thus, the connection of the sensors with the control unit (hub) occurs only a few seconds per hour and has an impact on the bees, if it suddenly exists, much less than, for example, a cell tower located several kilometers away or the push-button telephone of a beekeeper visiting the apiary once in Week.

There may be several problems. For example, there is not enough memory in your smartphone or your smartphone. But our application takes up very little memory, so the problem may be different. At the moment, the application is not hosted on Google Play, so when installing the application and its updates, manual confirmation is required that you trust the developer of this application. We, in turn, undertake that this application will not cause any harm to you or your smartphone.

The Apipulse application is constantly evolving and new features are being added. You may need to log out of your account (logout button at the bottom left of the application menu) and log in again.

Taking into account the propagation of the signal and the operating algorithms of the control unit (hub), there may be omissions in reading the parameters of some sensors, which are mainly located at a distance from the control unit and are not in the zone of reliable reception from it (a distance of more than 15 meters).