Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 May 19;21(10):3522.
doi: 10.3390/s21103522.

Self-Powered Smart Beehive Monitoring and Control System (SBMaCS)

Elias Ntawuzumunsi  1 , Santhi Kumaran  2 , Louis Sibomana  3
Affiliations

Self-Powered Smart Beehive Monitoring and Control System (SBMaCS)

Elias Ntawuzumunsi et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Beekeeping in Africa has been practiced for many years through successive generations and along inherited patterns. Beekeepers continue to face challenges in accessing consistent and business-driven markets for their bee products. In addition, the honeybee populations are decreasing due to colony collapse disorder (CCD), fire, loss of bees in swarming, honey buggers and other animals, moths, starvation, cold weather, and Varoa mites. The main issues are related to un-controlled temperature, humidity, and traditional management of beekeeping. These challenges result in low production of honey and colony losses. The control of the environmental conditions within and surrounding the beehives are not available to beekeepers due to the lack of monitoring systems. A Smart Beehive System using Internet of Things (IoT) technology would allow beekeepers to keep track of the amount of honey created in their hives and bee colonies even when they are far from their hives, through mobile phones, which would curtail the challenges currently faced by the beekeepers. However, there are challenges in the design of energy-efficient embedded electronic devices for IoT. A promising solution is to provide energy autonomy to the IoT nodes that will harvest residual energy from ambient sources, such as motion, vibrations, light, or heat. This paper proposes a Self-Powered Smart Beehive Monitoring and Control System (SBMaCS) using IoT to support remote follow-up and control, enhancing bee colonies' security and thus increasing the honey productivity. First, we develop the SBMaCS hardware prototype interconnecting various sensors, such as temperature sensor, humidity sensor, piezoelectric transducer-which will work as a weight sensor-motion sensor, and flame sensor. Second, we introduce energy harvesting models to self-power the SBMaCS by analyzing the (i) energy harvested from adult bees' vibrations, (ii) energy harvesting through the piezoelectric transducer, and (iii) radio frequency energy harvesting. Third, we develop a mobile phone application that interacts with the SBMaCS hardware to monitor and control the various parameters related to the beehives. Finally, the SBMaCS PCB layout is also designed. SBMaCS will help beekeepers to successfully monitor and control some important smart beekeeping activities wherever they are using their mobile phone application.

Keywords: Smart Beehive Monitoring and Control System (SBMaCS); beekeeping; bees’ vibration; energy harvesting; piezoelectric transducer; smart beehive.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
SBMaCS architecture.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic design of SBMaCS.
Figure 3
Figure 3
SBMaCS system interaction.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Piezoelectric energy harvester circuit.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Schematic diagram of piezoelectric energy harvester based on transducer and bees’ vibration.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Structure of RF energy harvesters.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Basic RF energy harvesting system.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Piezoelectric energy harvesting prototype design.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Piezoelectric energy harvesting prototype design.
Figure 9
Figure 9
RF energy harvested vs. distance.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Graph of power harvested vs. power consumed.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Data scheduling power-saving model.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Graph comparing generated power and power consumed.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Lab-based experiment of the system.
Figure 14
Figure 14
Temperature and humidity results.
Figure 15
Figure 15
Temperature and humidity relation.
Figure 16
Figure 16
Mobil application user interface for SBMaCS.
Figure 17
Figure 17
Temperature vs. time.
Figure 18
Figure 18
Gas vs. time.
Figure 19
Figure 19
Different graphs of humidity, temperature, and weight.
Figure 20
Figure 20
Graph of shutting down the system.
Figure 21
Figure 21
The graph of bees’ motion.
Figure 22
Figure 22
Control buttons in the mobile application of SBMaCS.
Figure 23
Figure 23
Design of the printed circuit board of the smart beehive mobile application system.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Dietlein D.G. A Method for Remote Monitoring of Activity of Honeybee Colonies by Sound Analysis. J. Apic. Res. 1985;24:176–183. doi: 10.1080/00218839.1985.11100668. - DOI
    1. Garibaldi L.A., Steffan-Dewenter I., Winfree R., Aizen M.A., Bommarco R., Cunningham S.A., Kremen C., Carvalheiro L.G., Harder L.D., Afik O., et al. Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance. Science. 2013;339:1608–1611. doi: 10.1126/science.1230200. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ntawuzumunsi E., Kumaran S. Design and Implementation of Smart Bees Hiving & Monitoring System; Proceedings of the 2019 IST-Africa Week Conference (IST-Africa); Nairobi, Kenya. 8–10 May 2019; pp. 1–9.
    1. Watson K., Stallins J.A. Honey Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder: A Pluralistic Reframing. Geogr. Compass. 2016;10:222–236. doi: 10.1111/gec3.12266. - DOI
    1. Qandour A., Ahmad I., Habibi D., Leppard M. Remote beehive monitoring using acoustic signals. Acoust. Aust. 2014;42:204–209.

LinkOut - more resources