HiveTool.org
Contents
HiveTool
HiveTool is a collection of readily available, off-the-shelf hardware and free, open source software that continuously monitors a beehive. Computerized hive monitors provide realtime and historic data and graphs of weight, internal and ambient temperature, humidity and light levels which give the beekeeper a noninvasive view into the hive.
- Hivetool.org - Documentation, instructions, and a forum for discussions on how to set up a bioserver to monitor a bee hive.
- Hivetool.net - Access the network of monitored hives: status, graphs, download data, view the video feeds.
Uses
Hive Management
Knowing what is happening in the hive is crucial to proper hive management. By knowing the beginning, end, and quantity of nectar flows, bee keepers can determine when to add and remove supers, when to move hives and where to locate hives to maximize honey production. Read More
Climate and Land Use Research
Plant/pollinator interaction is used to measure the performance of the environment, instead of the performance of individual hives. Read More
http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov
Education and Bee Science
- South Carolina Hive Instrumentation Project
- Bioacoustics
- Bioservers
- Visual Bee Counter
- History
- Colony Collapse
Hardware
A scale hive (or bioserver) consists of a computer (desktop, laptop, router, SBC/SOC such as Raspberry Pi), which is used to record, display, and analyze data from sensors such as scales, thermometers, hygrometers, microphones, cameras, photocells and raingauge. Listed below are readily available, commercial, off the shelf products that are currently in use or undergoing development and testing. Read More
Software
This project uses free open source software (FOSS). The operating system is Linux although everything should run under Windows. The Perl module GD::Graph is used to plot the data. The graphs and data are displayed with a web server, usually Apache. Read More.
Hive Selection and Manipulation
Guidelines from Protocol for Scale Hive Measurements of the Honey Bee Nectar Flow. Read More
About
Hivetool.org is an open source project comprised of beekeepers who work in electronics and information technology. Our goal is to produce software tools to monitor, manage and research bees and honey production.
