The journal "Beekeeping" published a review article written by the authors of the Apipulse System.
Of course, this is a great honor for our company. We are proud to publish it on our website.
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN BEEKEEPING, REVIEW OF EXISTING TECHNOLOGIES AND NEED FOR APPLICATION
M.V. Bulanov
R.K. Sold, Ph.D.
MVT LLC, info@mbt-tech.ru
Of course, this is a great honor for our company. We are proud to publish it on our website.
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN BEEKEEPING, REVIEW OF EXISTING TECHNOLOGIES AND NEED FOR APPLICATION
M.V. Bulanov
R.K. Sold, Ph.D.
MVT LLC, info@mbt-tech.ru
Beekeeping involves many problems that affect both the beekeeper and the bee colonies. These problems often lead to mistakes by novice beekeepers. They lead to low yields of bee products and loss of bee colonies.
How to prevent bee loss? Many, especially novice beekeepers, ask themselves this question.
The problem of bee death has always existed all over the world. It has only gotten worse in recent decades. The reasons are different: the active use of chemicals to treat plantings against pests, the weakening of bees from the general ecology and, as a result, damage from diseases and mites, oversight during the swarming period or during wintering - all these factors have a negative impact not only on the beekeeper’s pocket. And if now this threatens beekeepers and companies with financial losses, then in the future this could lead to the death of plants and starvation for literally the entire population of the Earth.
Beekeeping is a very conservative area of agriculture, but even in it today modern digital technologies help beekeepers, including technologies for monitoring and warning about the condition of bee colonies.
Digital technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT) are now an integral part of the existence of modern man and are widely used in industry and everyday life. A hive is a living organism, a home for bees, a closed ecosystem with its own microclimate. Drawing a parallel with a modern human home, you involuntarily recall digital “smart home” systems that control microclimate parameters and regulate environmental parameters in the house.
Enthusiasts have been working on the digitalization of beekeeping for a long time. History has many attempts to make digital assistants for beekeepers. With the development of wireless data transmission technologies, which allow wireless devices to operate for more than a year on small batteries, the digitalization of beekeeping has received a new impetus. Thanks to the use of Internet of Things sensors, machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, the beekeeper can fully control everything that happens inside the hive and is able to react in time to save his bee colonies.
Multifunctional wireless monitoring and warning systems have been conquering the markets of Europe and the USA for several years. Such systems help to monitor the life of bee colonies remotely 24/7, and if a threat to bees arises, find out in time about an alarming situation. The beekeeper gets the opportunity to quickly and proactively take the necessary actions to normalize the situation in the hives.
Wireless sensors, collecting data for such systems, allow the beekeeper to determine what threat the bees are facing. It has been scientifically proven that bees produce sounds at certain low frequencies depending on certain events that occur. By the frequency and level of these sounds, you can track several very important parameters - the loss of the queen bee, readiness for swarming, the presence of pests and the general health of the colony.
As you know, a family of bees maintains a constant temperature in the hive. By changing the temperature and the difference in temperature compared to the ambient temperature, you can understand the general condition of the bee colony. By changing the weight of the hive, you can determine the rate of pollen collection and assess the prospects of using this location for the future honey harvest, and in winter, monitor the food consumption of the bees. Hives often sit for several months in places where there are few people and many animals who want to enjoy the delicious honey. Shaking or turning sensors will indicate that the hive has been moved or turned over.
Thanks to the use of monitoring systems, the beekeeper will see all this in real time. More advanced systems are already beginning to implement artificial intelligence systems that not only inform the beekeeper about the action taken, but also predict the behavior of the bees several days before the event occurs.
“Smart hive” systems are increasingly used by beekeepers of different levels with different numbers of bee colonies.
Amateur beekeepers who have several hives near their home keep bees as pets, studying the basics and methods of beekeeping with great interest and pleasure - for them, “smart hive” systems will be in touch with bees around the clock, collecting important information about their well-being according to various parameters . Some even install video cameras and infrared cameras so they can see their bees day and night.
Professional beekeepers who own several dozen or even hundreds of income-generating hives, who are concerned not only about the condition of their apiaries in terms of preserving and increasing the honey harvest and financial revenue from the sale of beekeeping products, but also want to optimize the work in their apiary. For them, smart hive systems will collect data on the condition of bee colonies and report any impending problem in advance.
Large beekeeping associations and companies, by digitalizing and using similar “smart hive” systems, facilitate efforts to maintain the health of bee colonies and make them more specific and targeted in remote apiaries. The introduction of monitoring systems will allow you to know exactly which of the many hives you need to pay attention to first, who you can visit later, in which hive unauthorized “beekeepers”, strangers or animals came to rummage. The introduction of digitalization of apiaries at such associations, despite the apparent absolute high cost of such systems, allows for significant savings to be achieved already in the first year of use.
The use of monitoring systems with one control unit that collects information from many sensors allows both large and small beekeepers not to incur large expenses at a time, because once purchasing a control unit and several sensors for an apiary, you can later expand the system by purchasing additional sensors. The latter, by the way, significantly distinguishes such systems from all-in-one devices, where the sensor is, in addition to a data collector, also a transmitter to a cloud server via cellular communication systems.
Among other things, control units are usually able to determine their location, and data on the location of apiaries will be able to tell farmers that apiaries are located near their fields and they will be able to promptly warn beekeepers about the processing of their fields. Such communication systems with farmers have been developed in Europe and the USA, but, unfortunately, in Russia they have not yet received proper development.
Systems for complex monitoring of hives have already begun to appear in Russia and there is hope that the use of digital technologies in Russian beekeeping will ensure that our beekeepers preserve the population of their bee colonies. Thanks to the introduction of monitoring systems, it is possible not only to increase the collection of honey and bee products and, as a result, to increase the income of producers, but also to increase the bee population throughout Russia, which on a global scale helps to increase the yield of many agricultural crops and preserve the environment.
Read more about the Apipulse System for Integrated Monitoring of the Condition of Bee Colonies: https://apipulse.ru/en
How to prevent bee loss? Many, especially novice beekeepers, ask themselves this question.
The problem of bee death has always existed all over the world. It has only gotten worse in recent decades. The reasons are different: the active use of chemicals to treat plantings against pests, the weakening of bees from the general ecology and, as a result, damage from diseases and mites, oversight during the swarming period or during wintering - all these factors have a negative impact not only on the beekeeper’s pocket. And if now this threatens beekeepers and companies with financial losses, then in the future this could lead to the death of plants and starvation for literally the entire population of the Earth.
Beekeeping is a very conservative area of agriculture, but even in it today modern digital technologies help beekeepers, including technologies for monitoring and warning about the condition of bee colonies.
Digital technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT) are now an integral part of the existence of modern man and are widely used in industry and everyday life. A hive is a living organism, a home for bees, a closed ecosystem with its own microclimate. Drawing a parallel with a modern human home, you involuntarily recall digital “smart home” systems that control microclimate parameters and regulate environmental parameters in the house.
Enthusiasts have been working on the digitalization of beekeeping for a long time. History has many attempts to make digital assistants for beekeepers. With the development of wireless data transmission technologies, which allow wireless devices to operate for more than a year on small batteries, the digitalization of beekeeping has received a new impetus. Thanks to the use of Internet of Things sensors, machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, the beekeeper can fully control everything that happens inside the hive and is able to react in time to save his bee colonies.
Multifunctional wireless monitoring and warning systems have been conquering the markets of Europe and the USA for several years. Such systems help to monitor the life of bee colonies remotely 24/7, and if a threat to bees arises, find out in time about an alarming situation. The beekeeper gets the opportunity to quickly and proactively take the necessary actions to normalize the situation in the hives.
Wireless sensors, collecting data for such systems, allow the beekeeper to determine what threat the bees are facing. It has been scientifically proven that bees produce sounds at certain low frequencies depending on certain events that occur. By the frequency and level of these sounds, you can track several very important parameters - the loss of the queen bee, readiness for swarming, the presence of pests and the general health of the colony.
As you know, a family of bees maintains a constant temperature in the hive. By changing the temperature and the difference in temperature compared to the ambient temperature, you can understand the general condition of the bee colony. By changing the weight of the hive, you can determine the rate of pollen collection and assess the prospects of using this location for the future honey harvest, and in winter, monitor the food consumption of the bees. Hives often sit for several months in places where there are few people and many animals who want to enjoy the delicious honey. Shaking or turning sensors will indicate that the hive has been moved or turned over.
Thanks to the use of monitoring systems, the beekeeper will see all this in real time. More advanced systems are already beginning to implement artificial intelligence systems that not only inform the beekeeper about the action taken, but also predict the behavior of the bees several days before the event occurs.
“Smart hive” systems are increasingly used by beekeepers of different levels with different numbers of bee colonies.
Amateur beekeepers who have several hives near their home keep bees as pets, studying the basics and methods of beekeeping with great interest and pleasure - for them, “smart hive” systems will be in touch with bees around the clock, collecting important information about their well-being according to various parameters . Some even install video cameras and infrared cameras so they can see their bees day and night.
Professional beekeepers who own several dozen or even hundreds of income-generating hives, who are concerned not only about the condition of their apiaries in terms of preserving and increasing the honey harvest and financial revenue from the sale of beekeeping products, but also want to optimize the work in their apiary. For them, smart hive systems will collect data on the condition of bee colonies and report any impending problem in advance.
Large beekeeping associations and companies, by digitalizing and using similar “smart hive” systems, facilitate efforts to maintain the health of bee colonies and make them more specific and targeted in remote apiaries. The introduction of monitoring systems will allow you to know exactly which of the many hives you need to pay attention to first, who you can visit later, in which hive unauthorized “beekeepers”, strangers or animals came to rummage. The introduction of digitalization of apiaries at such associations, despite the apparent absolute high cost of such systems, allows for significant savings to be achieved already in the first year of use.
The use of monitoring systems with one control unit that collects information from many sensors allows both large and small beekeepers not to incur large expenses at a time, because once purchasing a control unit and several sensors for an apiary, you can later expand the system by purchasing additional sensors. The latter, by the way, significantly distinguishes such systems from all-in-one devices, where the sensor is, in addition to a data collector, also a transmitter to a cloud server via cellular communication systems.
Among other things, control units are usually able to determine their location, and data on the location of apiaries will be able to tell farmers that apiaries are located near their fields and they will be able to promptly warn beekeepers about the processing of their fields. Such communication systems with farmers have been developed in Europe and the USA, but, unfortunately, in Russia they have not yet received proper development.
Systems for complex monitoring of hives have already begun to appear in Russia and there is hope that the use of digital technologies in Russian beekeeping will ensure that our beekeepers preserve the population of their bee colonies. Thanks to the introduction of monitoring systems, it is possible not only to increase the collection of honey and bee products and, as a result, to increase the income of producers, but also to increase the bee population throughout Russia, which on a global scale helps to increase the yield of many agricultural crops and preserve the environment.
Read more about the Apipulse System for Integrated Monitoring of the Condition of Bee Colonies: https://apipulse.ru/en