The Buzz Behind an App That Can Monitor Beehives Remotely
An Irish company called ApisProtect wants to give commercial beekeepers a high-tech helping hand. The company embeds sensors into hives that measure movement, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide, along with a microphone for monitoring sound. Then it sells an app-based monitoring service to beekeepers for a monthly fee. It also offers alerts, warning customers, for example, if a hive is too warm or too cold, or if it has fallen over based on accelerometer data.
That could be a real time saver for beekeepers with large numbers of hives distributed over large areas. “The beauty of the whole system is that it can happen remotely,” says Dan Borkoski, an apiary research associate at the University of Delaware. Borkoski has been using ApisProtect’s service to monitor 20 of the university’s hives in Georgetown, Delaware, since last fall. “It takes me an hour and a half to drive to that bee yard,” Borkoski says. More important, he adds, the app reduces how often beekeepers open hives, which can be extremely disruptive to colonies.
Full Wired article here.
