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British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Remote hive monitor

  • General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #5256  by AdamD
 30 Nov 2019, 14:06
Anyone thought of getting one of these ? - might be fun if you have cash to spare.
https://www.thorne.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=6126
 #5257  by AndrewLD
 30 Nov 2019, 15:29
I looked this up and found myself redirected from website to website. All I could find was that it registers temperature and humidity and also the app takes some sort of feed from local weather data. I think it would take a lot of skill to interpret such simple data and then determine the "risk of swarming, food shortage, sudden collapse in the population, risks of pathogens due to humidity, etc.". Furthermore there was a warning to visit a website to check coverage in your area before purchase and that link just took me to a Google map of France with the symbol "Hostabee" centred on Paris :?
At a £100 per hive and then 36 euros per year subscription for each device after the first year, they do suggest you could monitor say 1 in 3 hives but then sods law says that it's one of the other hives not monitored that swarms.
It all looks a bit start up to me so I'll pass on this. But it will tell you where the hive is just in case you forget (or it's stolen I guess....
In any event, is it not more satisfying to visit your hives and see what's happening, learning to interpret what you see and hear rather than have a app try and do the job for you?
 #5258  by NigelP
 30 Nov 2019, 17:22
Type your nearest town in the search bar.... I have no coverage, London is fine.
Whilst nothing beats going through a hive it would be nice to know what temp etc they do at the times you don't go through....like now. If nothing else just out of curiosity.
Interesting device.
I'd buy one ....but as no coverage no point.
 #5259  by Japey Edge
 30 Nov 2019, 17:41
I like the concept, but I've been working with a colleague of mine on a monitoring system based on an arduino uno. The temperature and humidity aspect is sorted. We need to determine which battery type is best for say a year or two lifespan (depending on frequency of data updates).

Our design is based on there being a server nearby, but as we develop it we can incorporate 3G sim cards etc.

Will let you know how we get on. So far the arduino and sensors are pretty cheap. It's the time that's the big cost at the moment.
 #5261  by NigelP
 30 Nov 2019, 17:52
Whats the range of Bluetooth?
It wouldn't cover out apiaries but home ones?
 #5262  by Japey Edge
 30 Nov 2019, 18:38
We thought about Bluetooth but the range wouldn't be great even for a home apiary. WiFi is good but drains batteries quicker. Alternatively there is LoRa which has very good distance and low battery consumption.

I'd love to be able to incorporate a load cell to monitor hive weight too. There are a few beekeepers out there who have managed it, but I haven't been able to find out from them if you have to tare the cells occasionally due to the drift in accuracy over time under constant load.

Even if it's inaccurate (to a point), it would be quite useful to see if there was a sudden change in weight for swarming reasons and what not.

It just makes me think, if I had an out-apiary say 10 miles away, I'd like to be able to see what the readings are, say:
Hive 1 - sudden weight loss
Hive 2 - really low temperature
Hive 3 - high humidity

Just little bits of information like this would give me something to think about on the journey - ie "has hive 1 swarmed?", "has hive 2 died out or has it been knocked over?" and maybe "what on earth does high humidity mean???" :lol:
 #5263  by MickBBKA
 30 Nov 2019, 23:03
Makes you wonder how beekeepers have managed for the last 4,000 years. :D
 #5267  by AndrewLD
 01 Dec 2019, 13:11
We had a post on our association's Facebook just now that prompted me to go out and see how my hives were doing. I opened up a flap in the insulating hive covers and stuck my ear to each hive. All good, back to lunchtime beer....

Despite my initial scepticism about these monitors, if one could listen for me, flag an abnormal hive sound and then enable me to listen for myself from the comfort of my armchair (lunchtime beer in hand) then I might be interested :)
 #5268  by AdamD
 01 Dec 2019, 16:16
Japey Edge wrote:
30 Nov 2019, 17:41
I like the concept, but I've been working with a colleague of mine on a monitoring system based on an arduino uno. The temperature and humidity aspect is sorted. We need to determine which battery type is best for say a year or two lifespan (depending on frequency of data updates).

Our design is based on there being a server nearby, but as we develop it we can incorporate 3G sim cards etc.

Will let you know how we get on. So far the arduino and sensors are pretty cheap. It's the time that's the big cost at the moment.
Seems like a fun project. Solar panel on the roof for power perhaps?

(Random fact of the day: There's a 70% import tarriff on solar panels into the EU. Makes me wonder whether the take-up would be higher if the import duty was removed).
 #5275  by NigelP
 01 Dec 2019, 21:17
AdamD wrote:
01 Dec 2019, 16:16
#
(Random fact of the day: There's a 70% import tarriff on solar panels into the EU. Makes me wonder whether the take-up would be higher if the import duty was removed).
Sooner we are out of the EU the better.
Boris rules KO :D