iTRUBEC – IoT for Bees

iTRUBEC (iDRONE) – What is this project about

Overview

Varroa Destructor is a parazite infecting bees in different stages of their live. It could ruin the beehive completely in a couple of months. Common treatment is based on the usage of different chemicals. It is also possible to kill it using a temperature between 44°C and 49°C which is lethal for Varroa Destructor but still safe for bees.

The higher temperature can be reached either the natural way using so called solar hives (but they we rely on bees to regulate the potentially high temperature) or the hive can be heated artificially. There are commercial solutions available nevertheless they are quite expensive and also dependant on the power network availability.

The purpose of iTrubec project is to propose, build and test a simple (and therefore cheap) and mobile hive heating solution controlled IoT (Arduino and a couple of different sensors) which would run for a necessary time (4 hours at least) using the common car battery.

Challenges

There is a number of challenges in front of us:

• What is the smallest power needed to heat the beehive to 44°C to 49°C?

• What is the ability of bees to ventilate the hive and decrease the temperature?

• How well and flatly is the temperature distibuted is the hive?

• What will be final cost of material needed to build the final product? (Nothing to say about the cost of our time!)

We took this as a challenge and started to think, brainstorm, prototype and test.

Why do we do all this? Because it could be a help to the bees and beekeepers. Because it is related with technology we love. And last but not least because it is fun!

Actual status

iTRUBEC device and mobile application for monitoring on Android are ready for testing in beehive.

Testing

2018-04-30 Testing in a beehive yet without bees:

Looks like it would be efficiend to add one more heating pad.

More details could be found at http://itrubec.cz