Beekeepers wishing to stay focused on their bees and harvests needed a way to continually monitor their hives. One way to do this would be to create a source of information that would be easy to decipher, such as the number of bees leaving the hive or an accurate estimate of the winter honey reserve. To do this, Thierry De Vreese, director of HoneyInstruments, put the first elements of a connected hive scale on paper.  

Technical challenges included how to create a highly accurate energy self-sufficient and absolutely reliable scale capable of delivering data in sometimes very isolated locations. The final product had to be extremely robust, very easy to use, weatherproof, and within a reasonable budget. The connected scale is aimed at professionals who generally work with more than 150 beehives, most often in transhumance: the hives are transported to different areas depending on the flowering season and the type of flowers to produce a specific honey.

To evaluate the weight of the hive with precision, HoneyInstruments incorporated the PW10 load cell developed by HBK. This device can measure a weight of up to 300 kg with an accuracy of 20 grams, has minimal power consumption, and is known to be totally reliable. The load cell operates outdoors and can easily withstand the harsh winters and hot summers that hives are often subjected to. With an accuracy of 20 grams, it is possible to estimate the entry or exit of about 200 bees. A hive contains more than 50,000 bees.

The sensor is fixed in the heart of a metal structure known as a double H structure, which forms two support arms. The lower part is placed on the ground and connected to one side of the sensor, the upper part supports the hive and presses on the other end of the sensor. This structure creates a deformation proportional to the weight of the hive. A temperature sensor located in the housing completes the weight information. However, this is not the temperature inside the hive but the temperature outside in the local environment.

The sensor is powered by an electronics box that performs several essential functions and is powered from a single 3.7-volt lithium battery. The battery is changed once a year and has been preferred to the more expensive and more fragile solar collector.

Once digitized, the signals of the hive's weight variations must be transmitted to the user. Beekeepers place their hives in places chosen for the quality of their flowers but often isolated from any communication network. GSM technology has been automatically excluded because it uses far too much energy. To solve the transmission issue, HoneyInstruments chose the Sigfox network. This network uses the ISM frequency band, which is particularly well suited to long-range, low-speed exchanges in rural areas.

This is because the hourly weight and temperature information does not represent a large volume of data. The range is about 40 km with a simple antenna of about thirty centimeters. The network of 2000 antennas cover more than 95% of the territory and is present in 70 countries. Once transmitted, the data is transferred to the Internet network and made available to the user on the Cloud HoneyInstruments platform.

Users accesses their data using the serial number of the hive. Beekeepers generally have a great deal of knowledge about what is happening in the hive at different times of the day and in different seasons. Weighing results confirm day after day the evolution of the swarm and the normal course of these events. All of this attention results in fewer hive movements and an optimal honey harvest.

For more information: 

HBK 

Load Cells

HoneyInstruments 

Sigfox

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