Introduce, Connect, Collaborate

Are you based in the Southern Hemisphere? Are you interested in collaborating on sensor development this Spring? We want to connect remote collaborators to join our sensor development team and test the sensor system through our Winter (we're based in Colorado and Spain).

Please introduce yourself, your location and your skills below. If you see anyone below who is local to you, please reach out to them by typing @(username) in your post and they will be notified.

Hi guys
Happy to be involved in this - I work for Aurecon, which is an engineering company in Australia, New Zealand and Southern Africa. We already have a small apiary at our Canberra office in South-Eastern Australia, and this is within range of our office wi-fi, so this should be a good test site.
We have basically every kind of engineer that you might need, including electronic and acoustic. Personally I am a botanist and a keen amateur beekeeper.

Let us know what you need done, and we will make it happen
The company is quite supportive, and we blog on the global Aurecon site: http://aurecongroup.com/en/blogs/latest-posts.aspx

Looking forward to helping you out!

Cormac

G'day all,
I'm a boilermaker by trade (4th year adult apprentice). I've been a hobby apiarist for about 20 years. Although I haven't got any live hives at the moment, now that I've finished my technical studies I'm keen to get back into it. Your project sounds extremely worthwhile and I would like to contribute what I can.

Electronics is another area I have dabled in, and I'm currently in the process of developing my own 3D printer. I'm also familiar with alot of the basic processors and power ic's involved in this type of thing.

I haven't really been involved to much in software development, mostly because it involves alot of study, which I haven't really had the time for. However it is something I will be looking at in conjunction with my 3d printer project. I do, however, know my way around the more intricate problems that crop up on windows, Linux and android.

I live in the southern Shoalhaven region, south of Sydney N.S.W. With access to the southern highlands and central west slopes and planes.

I'm allso intrested in Australian native bees, and how urban sprawl is affecting them. Also I believe they may have huge benefits in pollination.

Thanks for posting @Jagungal & @MattSCNSW!

Ideally we would send you each a kit from which you could be streaming data to the platform. It seems you're relatively close to each other if there was any desire to work together on this or bounce some ideas between each other. Our sensor team are meeting tomorrow, so I will have more solid information to share then.

@Jagungal - it seems you've got a good team behind you, and we'd be excited to see if your engenieers come up with any ideas. Perhaps @MattSCNSW could come learn some stuff!

Please feel free to start chatting - you can tag/notify each other in comments using the @(username) feature on the forum.

@Jagungal @trizcs hi, I'm at Sanctuary Point just south of nowra, I understand you are in Canberra, about 3hr away. I'm interested in getting this collaboration moving and thought it'd a good idea to have some brainstorming.
I'm interested in adapting the sensors to native bees around our urban areas. Due to their size I consider it would be interesting to look at installing sensors directly to existing native hives. What are your thoughts 💭
Currently I don't have any honey colonies but I'm hoping to change that soon . And will get sensors into them as I get set up .
Looking forward to hearing your ideas

Yeah, that would be really useful for the native bees, as they are so sensitive to temperature. Would also be really interesting to hear the inside of the hive during colony battles.

We have a Warre hive turning up fairly soon, but that will be starting from scratch - will actually be fun as we should be able to get a dataset that tracks from initial establishment through the full annual cycle.

Swarm season is just starting to kick off here, which is awesome fun!

Excellent, where are you getting your swarm, are you going to attempt to catch one? Let me know if you want some tips.
I imagine that audio sensors may need to be tuned to a different frequency for natives, but that's a great idea. I'll have to do a bit of research.
Have you got a kit? I haven't had my hands on one yet. Can't wait to have a play with it.
I've also been in contact with our local community garden and will be talking to them about setting up a native beehive with them. This way I won't have to interfere too much with wild hives, just collection of data from them. Then compare with what's going on in the control hive.

I am going to catch one, I am a registered swarm collector with the local beekeeping club.

The audio should work fine with either natives or european bees - I just hope that we will actually be able to feed the sound live over the web, it will be fun to listen in on the bees.

There is a native bee collector based on the south coast who gets a lot of hives from the timber contractors - when they spot one in a tree that they are felling, they section the log with the hive off and give it to him. You might try asking around at any local sawmills.

I'm from the Eastern Cape in South Africa, and while I don't have much in terms of electronics experience I'm a beekeeper , currently with 20+ (Apis Mellifera Scutellata) hives. I'm about to add a remote apiary, with 22 hives within a shipping container. I'm also a c#.net developer. Whenever I've wanted to start dabbling in electronics, I've tended to be waylaid, so while I'm interested, I've never really got down into things.

Would be willing to be involved. I also have some experience with setting up wireless networks - I found that access to fast internet while living on a farm was sometimes tricky, so became my own WASP.

WOW! I'd LOVE to be involved in this research please!
I have my 2 Hives located in Woori Yallock, (Yarra Valley) Victoria, Australia.
I am living in Ringwood (suburb of Melbourne) Victoria, Australia without space for my Hives
I feel that this research is vital, as I have an extreme awareness of lack of Bees in the Ringwood area.
There are a lot of Bee Keepers (Custodians) in the Yarra Valley and surrounds and I am extremely aware that there is most likely not enough Bee Foods for them.
I look forward to hearing more information about this research and how I can support it.
Many thanks for this awesome site by the way!
Thanks!

Hello and greetings,
Was introduced to this site by @k8Bee. I'm located about 15 minutes from her hives, near Warburton Vic, Australia.
I have three hives, am a recent, but enthusiastic beekeeper, and part of the active local bee group. I have an interest in small electronics, particularly RaspbPi) and have a friend with a computerised router/CADCAM table. We've just been starting to make our own designs for langstroth style hives - but now I'm very interested to explore your site more and try your plans.
Would love to hear more from you. Thank you.

Hi everyone.

My name is Jennie and I live in South Africa on the Eastern cape. ( in a teeny tiny town near addo ) I am a complete novice when it comes to bee keeping just starting out with my very first hive which I am building ( TBH )

However I have a degree in computer science ( with a focus on computer vision and HCI ) and have worked in the games industry and as a tools programmer as well as working on an iphone game. ( as well as web stuff ) I have had a long interest in more physical programing as well as data collection and representation.

I also have worked in wildlife documentaries as a camera-girl and an editor as well as doing graphic design and motion graphics so hopefully my some what eclectic skill set will be of use!

So I am keen to be useful and involved in any way possible!

Hi Jennie, I'm in Alexandria (Near Kenton-On-Sea), live on a farm, have been a bee keeper for about a year, and am also a software developer.

I've also wanted to get into hardware, but never seem to get past go.

Not sure where exactly you are, but would be happy to look at collaboration. I'm keen to do monitoring of my hives in an inexpensive way.
Russell