IndusBee 4.0 – Integrated Intelligent Sensory Systems for Advanced Bee Hive Instrumentation and Hive Keepers’ Assistance Systems
The importance of insects, and honey bees in particular, for our ecosystem is undisputed. Currently, environmental problems from pesticides to parasites endanger the well-being or even the existence of honey bee colonies and insects in general. This imposes an increasing load on skills and activitie...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IFSA Publishing, S.L.
2019-09-01
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| Series: | Sensors & Transducers |
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| Online Access: | https://sensorsportal.com/HTML/DIGEST/september-october_2019/Vol_237/P_3118.pdf |
| Summary: | The importance of insects, and honey bees in particular, for our ecosystem is undisputed. Currently, environmental problems from pesticides to parasites endanger the well-being or even the existence of honey bee colonies and insects in general. This imposes an increasing load on skills and activities of hive keepers. Sensors, instrumentation, and machine learning offer solutions on the one hand to effectively instrument bee hives and on the other hand to provide efficient assistance systems for hive keepers. By advanced hive instrumentation and intelligent evaluation of the acquired information hives can be monitored more easily and with less intrusion. Like in other industrial disciplines, e.g., Industry 4.0, operation can move from scheduled to event driven activity. The development in Micro-Electrical-Mechanical- Systems and Internet-of-Things field in general allows to achieve affordable integrated monitoring solutions. However, not in all tasks a dedicated instrumentation of each hive is required, and mobile assistance systems and devices to be employed in a single instance for the whole apiary will complement the instrumentation activity and the overall approach of our IndusBee 4.0 research project. Examples of this category are, e.g., honey quality assessment tool as an extension of established hygrometers or a system for improved automation of the tedious and time consuming screening for the varroa infestation of hives. This paper provides a review of activities in the field and presents the current status of contributions to both lines of research in our IndusBee 4.0 research project. With regard to hive instrumentation, in addition to standard temperature, moisture, and weight monitoring, an approach of acoustical in-hive monitoring with automated decision making and notification implemented in-hive in a SmartComb has been pursued. Further, integrated gas sensors are currently added to the SmartComb to explore the in-hive detection of infestation and illness, e.g., (American) foulbrood. Visual flight hole inspection is successively explored by a separate system in or at the hive. With regard to hive keepers’ assistance systems, an approach automating the screening for the varroa infestation of hives was tackled first. Here, a cost-effective two step procedure, a first attention step for detecting candidate regions and a final classification step of these candidate regions, is applied. It is aspired to extend the approach to continuous in-hive varroa infestation monitoring. The integration of all information from hive instrumentation and assistance systems with data fusion and data analysis activities in apiary intelligence unit is aspired in the next step. |
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| ISSN: | 2306-8515 1726-5479 |