Design Problem

Bee health is crucial for the health of our planet, especially with the effects of climate change they are experiencing. It is therefore essential to monitor bees to understand how we can address these issues and help preserve bee health in countries like Kenya. This is why I have decided to build a remote bee monitoring system that will allow us to take readings of the main factors affecting bee health, such as temperature, the weight of the bee hive, and the volatile organic compounds present. The idea is to create many of these monitoring systems and place them in hives around the country to monitor the national bee health and see the main trends, allowing for a more detailed approach to resolving the problems affecting bees around the country. In addition to monitoring the health of the hive remotely, the system will allow bee hive owners to know when the right time to harvest the honey is. Entering the hive and checking for honey is a destructive process that causes unnecessary stress to the bees in particular if the hive is not ready for harvesting.

Design Process

I started by finding documentation for a similar project to see what kind of equipment and materials I would need. However, the project was very different in the way they obtained the readings, so I decided to opt for an Arduino UNO, which is easier to work with and significantly cheaper. After obtaining an Arduino and my sensors for temperature, humidity, weight, and VOCs, I wrote code for those specific sensors and managed to obtain readings. I then connected the Arduino to the raspberry pi to transfer my readings there. From there I assembled the hive and transferred the data to Thingspeak for data visualization and remote readings.

Link Process to Journal and Video + “Live” Beehive Data

Link to process journal

GitHub Code Repository

Scan QR code to access “Live” Beehive Data