Big Data for Hive Management at the Hobbyist Scale
Many data collection technologies are for commercial beekeeping operations–ApisProtect uses sensors, internet connectivity (“internet of things”) and GPS pinpointing for remote hive monitoring systems. Beewise built “Beehome”, which I view as one large Langstroth hive containing a central corridor with a machine that “monitors the colonies 24/7 using computer vision, AI, and neural networks.” (Jewell, 2021). Another example is the Nectar migratory beekeeping record book software, which helps simplify large apiary management.
What about the small-scale operations with a few hives in your backyard? It will not surprise you to know that the software targets those with the money, i.e. the commercial guys. That said, alternatives use smartphone apps for managing bee health, and I have described Beescanning, Know Your Honey, beehive monitors (generic brands) and BeeHome.
Note: I have no affiliation nor have used all these products. If you consider me a fraud, the “exit” button is in the top right corner
BeeScanning: Integrating AI into Hive Management
Website: https://www.beescanning.com/
This app analyses broodframes images to determine their Varroa mite load, amongst other parasites (small hive beetles? Braula flies?). The results improve with continued use, as the program learns more about your hive and its habits. I reckon the ideal audience are hobbyist and small-time beekeepers, given the nature of the device and manual labour involved in gathering the photos… The pricing plans seem to agree too!
The AI Analyses Photos of Brood Frames
The beekeeper takes multiple photos of each frame – in a full depth frame, it’s four from each corner and each side, totalling eight images. These photos are uploaded into the app and then the AI calculates the mite load based its programming. The algorithm compares how many mites are visible in the photo compared to the hidden ones. BeeScanning’s FAQ states the the formulae were developed by analysing 1000 colonies with the BeeScanner and then comparing the results against alcohol washing from the same colonies.
The Varroa infestation levels are initially calculated in a similar manner to alcohol washes (if 10 mites are found from a sample of 500 bees, then the load is 10/500, which is 2%… get your treatment ready!). From there, the mite load is multiplied by a “unique factor” to deduce infestation levels. We are not told what the factor is, perhaps it is mathematics derived by the AI’s training on comparative studies between app, the aforementioned alcohol washing and field observations.
Detect Brood Abnormalities through Images
As a bonus, the app can determine signs of “Brood Disorder” – the brood frames are analysed for signs of diseases like AFB/EFB, sac brood and other abnormalities in cell structure, both pathogenic and non-pathogenic (e.g. hygienic behaviour leading to uncapping of infested brood). The results are not precise; however, the value of a brood disorder alert is in prompting the beekeeper into further inspecting their hives. Imagine going in for a post-treatment checkup and discovering Chalkbrood… many such cases!
Verdict: A Good Non-Intrusive Approach to Pest & Disease Management
I like the idea behind this app and would certainly use it if I had healthy hives remaining (as of writing, the Australian bee populations have not established a balance with the recent Varroa incursion and I am one of the more-unfortunate beekeepers).
I see potential for BeeScanning to expand into other pest avenues – perhaps it can identify the number of wax moth/small hive beetles hidden in the nooks and crannies or the hive, based on frame lesions or detect Braula fly infestations on adult bees. Even more niche would be Tropilaelaps mite detection in infected bees– considering the advent of smartphones, this would be a viable way to break into the Asian market.
A note on drawbacks: the developers previous reported issues with image processing and user-friendliness (is it wrong to state that the average beekeeper has below-average technological literacy?), that were amended in 2023. Since then, the company has launched extra tools to refine their product, with the “Bee Stand” being a frame that improves the picture taking quality of your phone -it holds both your phone and the frame upright, no more messing around with one hand or dodgy leaning frames against the hive box.
Also From BeeScanning App Know Your Honey – Addressing Adulterated Honey Products
“Fake honey” is nothing new – products sold in your supermarket from large-scale producers are more much (much, much) more likely to be fraudulent than honey from a local beekeeper. I can point you to various scientific articles and shmarticles analysing honey samples from markets around the world, or I can give you this heuristic: real honey isn’t cheap, and one should be cautious of mass-produced, imported honey.
The BeeScanning team are utilising AI analysis on honey photographs to determine its quality and verify that it is indeed pure honey before it is packaged into containers. Photographic analysis of a super can tell a beekeeper if the honey is ready to harvest and the approximate weight of that box, reducing the need for the sticky inspections. From there, the super is tagged and identified by “fingerprints” that look at its pollen content, sugar composition (e.g. glucose: fructose ratio), fragrances and other factors. This ID follows the honey all the way to the packaging and keeps the product honest – any deviations (e.g. addition of corn syrup) will be detected and dealt with.
I stop here – this product suited towards commercial beekeepers and perhaps the regulatory departments of their company. It is beyond the scope (and need) of an honest hobbyist beekeeper.
BeeHome – A Smart Hive for Commercial Beekeepers
Website: https://beewise.ag/home
The BeeHome is a solar powered hive with cameras and sensors serving as a “robot beekeeper”. Having solar power means energy can be used to adjust the hive microclimate, in their case by heating the hive to manage disease. What I like most is their the brood comb incubator – Varroa-infested frames can be heated to temperatures that kill mites without harming the developing brood. With further adoption, this could be a viable “circular” method of managing Varroa – detect mites, use solar energy to generate heat to kill mites without harming the rest of the colony. Rinse and repeat (more like “bake and shake”?).
The BeeHome is compatible with Langstroth frames at a larger scale – whereas a traditional Langstroth can hold up to ten frames from a single hive, a BeeHome can have up to 100 frames from ten hives, split into compartments of ten (yes, ten colonies in a single box). Each “compartment” has its own entrance and sugar feeder and can be moved around with a standard Bobcat.
This product is better shown than told, see videos below:
Verdict: Great for Commercial Pollination, Not Honey Harvesting?
The technology is skewed towards commercial beekeepers on account of their costs. But if you’re a backyard beekeeper interested in housing up to ten colonies in a single box, it couldn’t be better. One thing I did not come across in my research is honey harvesting – how are queen excluders or similar used in the equipment setup to ensure that frames become filled with honey and not brood? I know they use the standard Langstroth frames, so perhaps there is a way to manipulate honey production as in the normal hives.
In the second video link above, a vertical model of the Beewise is shown, which suggests that a queen excluder can be used when the hives are arranged vertically. The first video has a horizontal arrangement model, which indicates more for pollination and brood rearing rather than honey extraction.
All up, an innovation to keep an eye on. If anyone from Beewise reads this and wants to test their equipment in a suburban Australian backyard setting, I’m your man!
Beehive Monitors are a Dime a Dozen
There are a variety of weight scales, temperature/humidity monitors, forager counters and other data-gathering implements on the market – just search “bee monitor”1 and see the ranges of quality proprietary products as well as the white-labelled ones from an AI-generated storefront.
At their core, these devices log data that allow beekeepers to observe inter- & intra-seasonal trends. Use cases include:
- Measuring hive weight over certain timeframes- hourly, daily, weekly monthly. I elaborate below at the great risk of sounding like a subscription salesman:
- Hourly assess the rate of daily forage, good for tracking nectar flows & pollen booms.Daily includes the above, plus health monitoring (disease tracking).Weekly is useful to assess the changes in forage and honey stores by logging weight gains in the supers.
- I wouldn’t recommend tracking disease progression weekly or monthly- you’ll hit a point where it goes from “good” to “gone” quite quickly.
- Monthly is for an overall picture of your environment… year after year it’ll give you a good indicator of the ideal foraging timeframes for your locality.
- Hourly assess the rate of daily forage, good for tracking nectar flows & pollen booms.Daily includes the above, plus health monitoring (disease tracking).Weekly is useful to assess the changes in forage and honey stores by logging weight gains in the supers.
- Temperature and humidity results show how well bees are managing atmospheric conditions and will vary between boxes – the brood box will have a higher temperature and relative humidity than the super (~34°C and 50-70% RH, depending on the colony strengths and ambient conditions; Li et al 2016).
- Supers have different readings compared to the brood box because no brood rearing takes place; honey is nonliving and so long as the temperatures don’t melt the comb, humidity and temperature can remain lower. A lower humidity also helps in managing small hive beetle/wax moth eggs, who require >50% RH to hatch.
- A bee counter tells you how many drones and foragers you have coming and going, as well as the number of times a queen leaves for her mating flight
- Perhaps in the future these tools can manipulate light to see how many foragers are returning with loads pollen, water or nectar, or how many sexually mature vs. immature drones are departing, or how full the queen’s sperm storage organ (spermatheca) is after each mating flights
- The latter would be very useful for queen breeders, less manual handling of queens means less injury.
- Bee counters have the added bonus of assessing hive disturbance – if a weak hive surges in activity during a nectar dearth, it could very likely be under attack from a robber colony– watch the show!
- Perhaps in the future these tools can manipulate light to see how many foragers are returning with loads pollen, water or nectar, or how many sexually mature vs. immature drones are departing, or how full the queen’s sperm storage organ (spermatheca) is after each mating flights
- In sound-enabled make swarm prediction possible as it picks up vibrations from soon-to-be departing bees.
- Other swarming indicators include is an increased count of bees on the landing board and increased temperature in the colony, both occurring prior to take-off.
- Overwinter monitoring – assessing cluster temperature and activity during the cold months.
Verdict: Up To You – Nice to Have, Not “Must Have”
I don’t favour any particular brand, so my recommendations are to purchase from a local company, or from a seller that uses the least AI-generated slop (you know who you are).
Limitations of LLM Technology in Beekeeping
Accessibility is a big factor – beekeeping is not the rich man’s industry, and the hobbyist will only want to spend so much. Particularly for those beekeepers in the third world, $100 USD for a single hive monitor does not make sense (and may not be as useful for A. cerana).
The commercial guys can get all the sensors they want, but in the end a manual hive inspection is the gold standard. If my sensor tells me the bees are buzzing in agitation, how do I know the agitation is due to excess predation, pesticide positioning or for increased ventilation during a humid day? Overreliance on datapoints may make you miss the bigger picture – perhaps it really was a wet week, and the bees are removing excess moisture, so there’s no need to panic.
An issue for the in-house sensors is… the bees themselves, they may end up being blocked by propolis or wax to suit the bees liking. This is more the case in cheaper models, or those with external sensors (think microphone or camera lens) – the bees could block it off and render it ineffective without frequent cleaning.
I wonder if the technology of these consumer goods is advanced enough to allow capped brood imaging, or whether this is reserved for the research labs with their thermal imaging cameras?
Future Avenues for AI and Beehive Monitoring
The limitations listed above are the future directions for research – as models get more advanced, they can combine audiovisuals, and chemical (pheromone) detection to assess queen and colony health, the brood lifecycle and general markers of social cohesion (e.g. being able to detect whether a colony is behaving aggressively… Imagine the profits!). The same models can be fine-tuned to your local geography, mapping out the climate, floral blooms, pests and competition (e.g. native bee bee-haviour) … granted this can already be established from textbooks and internet searches – perhaps package them into one app is a viable venture?
The software itself could incorporate self-cleaning mechanisms (e.g. periodic blasting of warm air to remove propolis/wax buildups), as well as an energy harvesting source (thermal energy comes to mind – no solar, wind or water is possible inside the hive!). Internet connectivity is an issue in very remote regions, but this is being solved with technologies like Starlink.
If commercial beekeeping is big business, then solving their problems is an even bigger business- reducing hive inspection time by 10% means more when you have 3000 hives instead of 3.
A followup article on automations in beekeeping can be found here.
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Footnotes
- *Alas, you won’t get the same outcome searching for “lizard monitor” ↩︎