How much would a hive monitoring system have to cost to be widely accepted?

Smertrios · June 22, 2015, 10:32:46 PM

Curious what people might pay for a tool that would inform them 24/7 about the weight of their hives and possibly other stats. I have an idea for a relatively cheap load cell that could be applied to bee hives but only time will tell if its doable or not.

BeeMaster2 · June 23, 2015, 12:10:48 AM

How low could you keep the price and still make a profit. If it is low enough, you could end up having your scale under almost every hive, especially hobbiest hives. If it was low enough, you might end up under every commercial hive.
I would love to know what is happening in all of my hives on a continous basis.
Jim

biggraham610 · June 23, 2015, 01:45:21 AM

As would I, whats your opinion of "Low". Keep us posted. G

Eric Bosworth · June 23, 2015, 06:08:37 AM

My wife found one that sounded great except for the price. It had temperature probes humidity sensors and of course a scale all wireless logging real time. Perhaps with one hive for somebody with more money than brains that would be cool I could not afford such a system. If you can make it affordable I would be interested.

BeeMaster2 · June 23, 2015, 07:33:12 AM

It would be great if it was wifi or blue tooth. You could get near your hives with an IPhone and download the data.
Jim

Michael Bush · June 23, 2015, 08:20:13 AM

The flow hive is going for $410 just for the frames for an eight frame super...

I think there are several levels at which it could be useful. Having one hive monitor per yard might give you some useful information, especially if you picked a strong hive to put it on. If it was cheap enough, though, it might be useful to put it on all the hives. Add an apiductor and you can even predict swarming...

BeeMaster2 · June 23, 2015, 08:34:07 AM

Michael,
What is an apiductor.
Jim

BeeMaster2 · June 23, 2015, 08:37:14 AM

Just found it:
An apidictor is an instrument which measures and records the sound in a beehive. The instrument records the aggregate sound made by the buzzing of the bees' wings. They were thought to be useful for predicting when a colony is preparing to swarm.

E.F. Wood invented and patented the apidictor in 1964. Only 300 are reported to have been sold.

Michael Bush · June 23, 2015, 09:40:38 AM

Plans:
http://www.beesource.com/build-it-yourself/apidictor/

mtnb · June 23, 2015, 11:22:46 AM

Quote from: biggraham610 on June 23, 2015, 01:45:21 AM
As would I, whats your opinion of "Low". Keep us posted. G

Yes. What's low? ...you guys are so informative! I learn something new every day on here

Michael Bush · June 23, 2015, 02:25:34 PM

It's obviously relative... personally it would have to be very broad in spectrum--weight, temp, apidictor to detect swarming, maybe volume of hum or even transmit the hum so I can listen. Now that I've had an observation hive in my living room I can tell when they are being robbed as well as when they are about to swarm or they are queenless. If your program could detect all of that it would be much more useful to everyone. The more useful it is, the more it's worth. The more specific, the more it's worth having one in every hive. The less specific may only be worth putting in one or two or three hives in a whole yard. Obviously the more you bring the price down and the more you bring the quality and quantity of information up the more practical it gets. All technology starts high and gets cheaper as the R&D and initial production costs get covered. I don't have a hard number as I also don't have a definitive set of requirements it meets. Let's say it predicts swarming, flags queenlessness, flags robbing, measures weight (and direction of the change in weight), measures traffic at the entrance, measures open brood pheromone (let's say with some kind of gas spectrometer) and transmits it all to your computer via wireless to a central location that transmits it by smart phone and it has a useful life of a decade. At $100 a hive I don't see how you could turn it down. On the other hand if it only tracks a few things, then it might only be worth putting one in two or three hives and even at $100 a hive it may not be that useful to me.

flyboy · June 23, 2015, 07:09:17 PM

There is another thread that I started on this. There is a $ 1000 one that does weight and maybe other stuff.

A local guy has built one that gives weight and I believe temperature every 15 minutes via a cable to the house. The scale is the expensive thing and it is a bit fiddly especially if it crashes as when it reboots, the scale zeroes. I believe he said it is ballpark $ 250 for the scale. Bear in mind that an inaccurate scale would be a disaster.

I believe he has ironed out a lot of the issues and he gives a report periodically to the club. One thing that is quite interesting is that he can see what blooms are doing the trick and the old tales about which bloom is the best are dropping like flies.

Then there is all of the information that you can get like when the honey is building up. I would love to have one but at some point financial reality sets in. Can you imagine having one on each hive????? The questions that could be answered....

Smertrios · June 23, 2015, 10:57:57 PM

I vaguely remember being told about bee frequencies from when I was a kid. That is something I would like in a hive along with temp (inside and outside), humidity and weight. I also like the idea of sound processing for what it might be able to tell about non-bees near the hive or trying to enter it.

Michael Bush · June 24, 2015, 08:35:16 AM

> Can you imagine having one on each hive?????

I can if it gave enough information. If you could basically tell the state of every hive, including if they are being robbed, or about to swarm, etc. and it was smart enough to interpret those things, it would be a very valuable tool.

Smertrios · June 25, 2015, 09:53:57 PM

Was just looking at http://www.beesource.com/resources/usda/the-different-types-of-honey-bees/ and it seems like if it wasn't for the early season swarming of the Carniolan it would be a favorite for more bee keepers.

snowmix · June 25, 2015, 11:49:25 PM

I think Michigan state has a patten on the hive monitor. I don't care though I really thought about making money with a monitor and its really not practical just because of all the different types of hive stands people use. You would have to send them a whole hive stand then offer support for the hardware and software its just not worth it. I am just going to donate my work to the cause. Ill take some photos of what I have going on to measure the weight.

Smertrios · June 26, 2015, 03:17:47 AM

I have some materials on the way to experiment with and I think my load cell is going to work, be low cost, be light weight, durable and able to weigh 500+ pounds without reaching a breaking point... Just thinking about patents makes me want to quit trying =/ That said I dont know how well it would hold up on a bumpy road with hives stacked to the legal limit!

IMO unused patents should run out *MUCH* earlier than 20 years! Rather than a 1 time fee the patent owner should keep paying on it quarterly (or even more often) for up to 20 years or they have lost it and its public domain! The government would love patent renewal money and the "patent trolls" pockets become less burdensome to them while at the same time "intellectual rights" would be back with the people where it belongs.

BeeMaster2 · June 26, 2015, 07:10:16 AM

Smertios,
I might be able to have these built/mass produced for less than $100. If you don't mind, I would like to give it a try. Let me know.
Jim

Smertrios · June 26, 2015, 04:36:24 PM

$100 a hive seems a bit pricey to me! I would want it around $20-$30 if possible. Lowest cost load cells on eBay are $1.50 each with shipping and they weigh upto 50kg each so by using 4 you can measure around 450 pounds. Wonder how well they would hold up in an outdoor environment! FYI even at $6 thats expensive compared to the load cell in my head)!

Smertrios · June 28, 2015, 12:19:09 AM

I would be surprised if you can sell a system for under $100. Does that include wireless and solar power? Tell me about that system! I would want some significant range on the monitor so that my future out-yards can also be sending data back to me.