Development of a low-cost wireless bee-hive temperature and sound monitoring system

Abstract

Precision beekeeping requires data acquisition, data analysis, and applications where the initial phase-data acquired plays a key role. This method of apiculture could be used to measure different bee colony parameters in real time, leveraging on wireless sensing technologies, which aid monitoring of a bee colony, while preventing infectious diseases like colony collapse disorder– a major loss in the management of honey bee population. In this paper, a low-cost wireless technology-based system, which measures in real-time, the temperature in and around the beehive and the sound intensity inside the hive is presented. This monitoring system is developed using an Arduino microprocessor, an ESP8266 communication module, and a Web-based server. The system provides valuable information concerning the bee colony behavior in terms of temperature and sound characteristics harvested from the server. Based on the measured temperature and sound information, colony beekeepers could easily detect events like increased food usage by the bees, breeding start time, pre-swarming action, actual swarming pattern, and the bee colony's death.