Thanks for sharing this @brianzable - some good questions above @coloradobum.

I think this system could be totally complimentary to the sensors we're installing, since there is obviously still a need for sentient life forms to examine hives properly!

Interested to see what @SenecaUPP, @BarefootBee and others have to say?

I think this sounds very exciting! I am not sure what kinds of specific data related possibilities it may have, but I think it has tremendous social networking possibilities. Would it look a little like Facebook or Instagram, where you could scroll through other folks observations, share things with each other, find mentors or other beekeepers near you? A network of folks that can communicate like that could be an awesome data base for a lot of research

One of the most interesting and useful data streams would be the fluctuations in weight through the season. This could be gathered from pressure sensors mounted under the hive, and would show when a colony is bringing in plentiful nectar, and give warning of declining stores during winter or a drought.

Temperature and humidity are obvious candidates for measurement; less so is an audio channel, measuring average pitch and volume. If queen piping could be detected and registered, there is the possibility of swarm prediction...

If you want to stray into more esoteric areas, there is pH of the atmosphere to consider.

@brianzable - I designed a scalable database to store data for an application similar to what you are describing. Would you be open to some collaboration? I have some ideas on protocols and standards.

@codenheimer - I'd love to checkout your database. Right now Hivelife is a Rails application and the database is built in a way that works best for Rails. I'm happy to collaborate if you like! Feel free to send me a message.

@BarefootBee - I love the idea of having a scale underneath the hive. That may actually become a summer project now that you mention it! pH of the atmosphere is also something that could be recorded automatically based on hive location. Since each hive will have a location associated with it, any sort of weather data will be pulled automatically so the beekeeper doesn't need to deal with filling it out. I think I saw atmospheric information in the NOAA api last time I played around with it.

@BarefootBee @brianzable

Hi Guys - I'd like to warn/deter you from attempting the hive scales based on some preliminary research I've done. At UPS, they use scales to measure packages, which obviously have to be very accurate since it costs customers/the company money per pound. They are rated for a maximum of 150#, cost $700, and require yearly maintenance and certification since they go out of calibration.

There are people working on this though (see the NASA study), and a quick google search will give you more information.

Further costs would include the integration with the microcontroller, weatherproofing the equipment, etc. If you have a large budget though, its completely possible.

Aaron

@AaronM @BarefootBee @brianzable

Please see this thread where @mtnscott and @geo3geo are discussing load cells, which can measure honey weight - it's not actually that expensive and @geo3geo has a working prototype and generated data already. Scott is talking with him about how to improve the code.

With something like this, we may be able to measure weight for individual top bars, which would be even more accurate than measuring the entire weight of the hive.

Can't you built upon this project? I am currently building this.

http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/beemonitor

Hey Jack - your work looks great - we're doing some similar stuff it seems.

I can see you're applying this to Langstroth style hives, whereas ours are currently being built into top bar style hives. From the images, it seems you're wiring sensors directly into the combs. Have you noticed this disturbing the bees? A lot of people have brought up concerns about EMF (electromagnetic fields) generated by electronics disturbing the colony. Have you noticed anything like this?

You can see more on our beehive & sensor integration on this threat, and we'd love to hear thoughts / experiences on EMFs in this thread.

Perhaps @mtnscott would be interested to take a look at @Jack's work?

no, the bees dont seems to be bothered, we are not talking high volgage or high frequency where you can expect emi radiation. I am building it, and have tested much of the system however I am not the guy who did the initial design or programming. I have changed some of their code because i want it wireless and i am automatically recognizing the sensors. I also haven't mounted them like they have. It is an excellent code base and an active working project though and the webinterface backend is free open source as well as the arduino code for the sensors. You can add whatever sensors you like to the web interface as well.

http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/beehive/v2

Hey @Jack,

Hivelife is a bit different from the project you linked above. When I said observations I really meant human observations - mostly from a typical hive inspection. I suppose this could have better been reflected in the post title but someone already changed for me (thanks!).

I plan on adding support for sensors later on down the line. Your project looks pretty awesome and I'd love to collaborate when I make it to a point where I want to get this interfacing with hardware!

Ohhh! sorry, i misunderstood. I thought you were going for recording data like temperatures humidity relative (outside/inside) hive weight and whatever else you can find a cheap sensor for. and there are loads of them.. with the temperature alone i can see if the hive is doing well, see if the queen is laying and see how big the brood nest is etc.

I am sure i must be doing it wrong as far as hive inspections, I don't see anything that i think needs to be recorded. I mean... I don't have the nagging inclination to search for the queen as long as i can see evadence that things are going well.

What sort of specific information do you find interesting enough to collect?

There is a lot if data that can be collected. Presence of queen cells (and type and progress), presence of disease, which treatments were applied, how a hive died, amounts of honey, and more. Much of it may not be interesting to anyone but the beekeeper but some of it may be useful in data mining. Off the top of my head I can think of a couple of examples of why you would want to keep records;

1. To compare how a hive is doing year over year. Logging the % of capped honey in each super might be useful if you can't remember how fast your bees progressed last year.

2. In the case where you have a ton of hives and multiple people maintaining these hives, you have a centralized way of keeping records.

3. Your new to beekeeping and you want to use the tool as a way of learning how to properly inspect (not saying Hivelife's forms will cover everything in this case, but it can help).

Some people don't take records and that's totally normal too. In the case where you have a couple of hobby hives there may not be a need for this sort of record keeping.

I do look at those things indeed, i suppose with more info from more people over more years you could gain some insights.

The whole thing about data mining is to collect as much data as you can. Even if now some of the data seems not interesting, its analysis may be fundamental for designing data stream mining algorithms. And I belive this is the direction we have to take to collect as much data as possible using standardized, cheap and easy to maintain equipment.

@jakub - what would be the minimally useful set of data in your opinion?

@AaronM I think at the beginning the already meaningful data should be collected such as in/out temperature, humidity, weight and colony count along with the Apidictor data. But such data set seems not enough if you want to answer the root decline causes and to be able to detect such a decline before it actually happens. So here is where all sort of air composition and voc sensors come to play. In the sense of big data analysis, the bigger data collection the better, because we are looking for answers without the complete knowledge of the domain. For sure there are many other sensors that might be helpful but not so obvious as those mentioned.

Hey all,

I've also been working on something similar, but a bit more abstract. I've been studying permaculture and designed what I was calling an "observation cataloging system." The original intent was to be able to more easily gather info on a large site by having multiple human observers recording things like sunlight, moisture, wind, etc., and then rolling up the info into a single database. The data schema is intentionally generic so that it can be used for types of projects. Anything from, say, documenting instances of street art in a city to counting monarchs over time along their migration path can be set up, and ultimately there'd be built-in reporting so that people can do basic statistical analysis and data visualization on what's reported.

I tried to sign up for the Hivelife email but it doesn't seem to be hooked up. Would love to either collaborate or just exchange ideas with anyone interested-- email me at niki@niki9.com.

Thanks!