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Remote hive monitoring in action

Gimlet — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 11:05:32 +0000

Installing a remote hive monitoring system should give the armchair beekeeper some measure of comfort – especially in a cold spring when opening hives is out of the question. However, it ain’t necessarily so!

Earlier this week my hive monitors raised 2 causes for concern plus a puzzle.

Here’s the graph. Click it for a close-up:

Key

The two uppermost lines are plots of the brood nest temperature in two hives at a distant apiary – green = Hive 1, yellow = Hive 2;
The black line is the hive scale under Hive 2;
The pink line is the ambient temperature (outside the hive).

As you can see from the pink line, the weather has been chilly for all of April, rarely above 10 degrees, so opening hives has been out of the question.

The comforting part – up until the 8th or 9th April was that despite the cold weather – the temperature in the brood nests of both hives was well above ambient and pretty steady.

Also – the weight of hive 2 was only going down very slowly. Nothing to worry about there.

However…

Concerns

Around 5th April the green line started to fall suggesting something amiss with the queen in Hive 1;
The weight of stores in Hive 2 is steadily going down – there was a 5 kg drop in the last month and that’s 11lb which ever way you look at it. How much of the remaining 27kgs was stores and how much was the weight of the hive?
Hive 1 is running a degree or so cooler than Hive 2. This could be a quirk in the works or something else… what though… That’s the puzzle.

Fortunately the weather improved slightly this week permitting a hive inspection.

Hive 1

One yr old Queen present and laying;
The reason for the dip in temperature was that the brood nest had moved away from the probe, leaving it stranded at the chilly perimeter;
Apart from that there is no obvious reason why this colony should have a cooler brood nest than hive 2.

Hive 2

In this hive is a 3 year old queen – very strong;
Plenty of stores so no need to worry about that;
In fact – it needs a super.

Brood nest temperature and the Native Bee.

The gap on the graph between the two brood nest temperature plots is probably an anomaly but is interesting if it isn’t.

The best thing to do would be for me to swap the two monitors to test it. If they continue more or less the same then there is a quirk in the system. If they cross over then Hive 1 really is running cooler than the other.

Lower brood nest temperature could be a characteristic of native bees and monitoring might be a way of picking them out. It just so happens that the queen in Hive 1 is a queen I bred and reared here. The queen in Hive 2 isn’t.

What next?

Rightly or wrongly I clipped the blue queen in Hive – after all it was quite warm and the bees were calm. If I have damaged her then it will show in the brood nest temperature.

It remains to be seen if the bees actively more the nest away from the sensor again.

I can continue to monitor the weight of Hive 2 from this distance and now that I’ve hefted them I know they can lose another 5kg before I need to worry.

Conclusions

Remote hive monitors can give reassuring information but there are limits.

You need to know:

the baseline;
that the sensors continue to be correctly positioned;
the monitors are functioning properly or you will get false alarms.

Click here for How Install your Arnia Monitors

Click here for more about Remote Bee Hive Monitoring and applications

Click here for a video overview of the Basic Hive Scale

Click here for video instructions on how to assemble your Basic Scale

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Arnia Remote Hive Monitoring Data

Gimlet — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 19:58:46 +0000

Since installing the Arnia hive monitors two weeks ago the following reassuring data has come in.

Click it for a close up:

So what does this tell us?

Well it tells me I don’t have to worry just yet. Here’s why:

Indoors

Before the 7th March all of this kit was in here, in the house with me where I could look at it and try and get my head round it.

The Hive Scale monitor – khaki line – was in the conservatory while the other monitor and the Gateway unit was mainly in the kitchen where the mobile signal is strongest.

In both rooms the temperature rises during the day and falls during the night. The differences between them should tell you that the conservatory is warmer than the kitchen – and it is. Except when I’m cooking in the evening which is where the temperatures recorded by the monitors in the kitchen peak and cross the khaki line. On days when this didn’t happen and the temperature in the kitchen remained below that of the conservatory even in the evenings – I was probably in the pub instead of cooking.

Outdoors

During the 7th March everything was moved outside for a trial run before introducing it to the bees. As you can see, the temperature recorded by all the units plummeted from mid-day onwards on the 7th as they spent the night together in the garden. For a brief period there, you can contrast the temperature in my house to the temperature outside – 3 or 4 degrees difference in the night time troughs only.

Bees

On the 8th I installed everything into one of my apiaries.

The data tells us several things:

The brood nest temperature of both hives is around 34 degrees so each of the colonies has a nest full of brood and a laying queen – probably;
One hive is recording a slightly higher temperature. Either I’ve got the probe slightly off centre or there is an anomaly with one of the monitors;
Remarkably, the bees keep their brood nests at a near constant 34 degrees despite the peaks and troughs in the ambient temperature, despite both being on open mesh floors;
The insides of both hives are very much warmer than my house – even when I’m cooking.

Stores

The black line is the Hive Scale showing the weight of stores. When I installed it I know that hive was good and heavy – so as long as there is no dramatic dip in that line I shouldn’t need to worry about stores. However, it is March, they have a good queen and they will be turning stores into larvae and bees. As soon as the temperatures improve I will have to go and check them.

Theft

Arnia monitors will also send alerts if hives are moved either by thieves or overturned by animals or weather. I have received no alerts so can assume all is well up there.

Conclusions

I know that both of my monitored hives have laying queens and functioning brood nests. I can only guess about the others at this time of the year before I have begun my inspections;
I know that the bees with the Hive Scale are doing well for stores;
I know that neither of those two hives have been either knocked over or stolen. I can only guess about the bees at other apiaries;
I know the the bees in both of the monitored hives are much warmer than I am right now.

Click here for How Install your Arnia Monitors

Click here for more about Remote Bee Hive Monitoring and applications

Click here for a video overview of the Basic Hive Scale

Click here for video instructions on how to assemble your Basic Scale

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Arnia Remote Hive Monitors – Installing

Gimlet — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 17:56:31 +0000

After you have fired up your Gateway and Monitors and made sure they are communicating with each other and with the Mother Ship as per the previous article – the very first step is to make sure you have a mobile signal at your intended apiary. If you don’t check this, your carefully assembled set-up may have to be carefully disassembled.

System

My system consists of a basic hive scale/monitor, a hive monitor, a weather station and the Gateway unit. These are all described in detail in the previous post. Click here if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

This hive (below) has been fitted up to the Arnia Basic Hive Scale and Monitor. Here’s how to install it with the bees.

Monitor Box

The Monitor’s Brain is in the grey box – it collects the data from the sensors and sends it wirelessly to the Gateway. You can screw it to the hive stand but it has quite a long cable so is quite versatile.

Sensors

The Basic Hive Scale has four attached load sensors plus three sensors which monitor hive activity. The latter need to be located thus:

Sound – a microphone which assesses activity.
Brood nest temperature (red) – a probe needs to go into the middle of the brood nest;
Humidity (blue) – another probe goes between a couple of frames near the back.

Cold Weather Set Up

If the weather is cold, like it is here, much thought and preparation can be done in advance at home to avoid disturbing the bees too much.

Microphone

The microphone can be fitted to a spare floor then instead of grovelling about in the long grass trying to feed it through the entrance block – all you need to do is:

Move the hive to one side,
Position the hive scale,
Set the new floor (microphone fitted) on the scale,
Place the brood box on top.

Temperature and Humidity

The hive above has been temporarily fitted with an eke with two small holes drilled into one side. If you have one of these prepared in advance, all you need to do is:

Gently remove the crown board;
Take careful note of where the centre of the cluster is because when they all come to greet you – and they will – it won’t be obvious any more;
Place the eke so the heat and humidity probes can be pushed though the two little holes;
The temperature probe goes to the middle of the brood nest;
The humidity probe sits between two frames near the back of the hive;
Small nubs of foam rubber wedged into holes will prevent the wires from sliding out;

The ordinary hive monitor has the same three probes and they are fitted in the same way as the Basic Scale Hive . There’s just no scale!

When the weather improves, and the hives can be properly opened up – all three wires can be fed through the entrance then up and over the relevant frames.

Summer Set Up

If you set this up in the summer then you can avoid all this pussy-footing about and feed the lot through the front door.

Gateway

The Gateway collects data wirelessly from the monitors and sends it once a day to the Mother Ship over the mobile phone network so you need to position this where there is a mobile signal and within 30m of the monitors or the wireless won’t work.

Weather Station

The Weather Station is a little grey box which collects rain and measures it as gravity pulls it down and out. It also has a sunlight sensor which is a wire with a white tip – the wire is about a meter long.

You’ll need to site the weather station out in the open and I’m not going to explain why.

Siting it needs a little bit of thought though because it is connected directly to the Gateway by a cable which is only so long. Also, the wire connecting the sunlight sensor to the Weather Station is only so long. This can be a bit of a conundrum.

In this case, the Monitor and the Weather Station are fastened to an adapted chair.

The sunlight sensor is taped up the little sapling thus:

And that’s all there is to it really. If all is well, your data will appear on your user interface.

Mesh Floors

One other thing about the scale hive though – and if you are familiar with open mesh floors you will know that slightest perturbation can have the flying bees all hanging up underneath the floor. The hive scale means the floor, and entrance, are lifted aloft about an inch so you will need to be prepared to block that gap till they adapt to the height change unless you are the hard hearted beekeeper who believes such trials are character building.

Murphy’s Towel

Anyway that white thing taped to the front bottom of the distant hive with duct tape is Murphy’s towel which is blocking the gap for now.

Murphy:

Click here for Arnia Remote Hive Monitoring – First Data

Click here for more about Remote Bee Hive Monitoring and applications

Click here for a video overview of the Basic Hive Scale

Click here for video instructions on how to assemble your Basic Scale

Click here for the video of how to assemble the Basic Scale Kit

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Arnia Remote Hive Monitors – Set Up

Gimlet — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 19:16:46 +0000

An Arnia hive monitoring kit, even at its simplest, consists of several components. The first thing you must do, before you take it to your bees, is fire it up and make sure all the constituent parts are working and that they are speaking to each other.

The set up isn’t difficult, the detailed instructions are clearly written in the User Manual but you wouldn’t want to do it out there in the weather with outraged bees. So here’s what you do. By the way – click any of these photos for a close up:

Kits may include one or more of the following:

Gateway unit;
Hive monitor;
Basic Hive Scale;
Weather Station.

Gateway unit

The Gateway unit gathers information from all the monitors in an apiary and beams them up to the Mother Ship once daily. The box on the left in the picture below is a Gateway unit – note the aerial. The box on the right is a weather station. I’ll get to that in a minute.

I successfully fired this one up here where the mobile signal is so pathetic we have to head for a particular spot in the yard to take calls but the Gateway manages fine.

To fire up the Gateway you unscrew the back plate and remove a plastic strip holding the batteries apart. After a couple of seconds a green light deep down inside starts to wink – job done. Replace back plate.

Hive Monitor

This is a hive monitor.

Note the three sensors:

Red – this one takes the brood temperature so it needs to be slipped into the brood nest;
Blue – measures humidity and has to be tucked between a couple of frames near to the back of the hive;
The other one, directly in front of the radio, is a microphone and this one measures the bee noise levels – buzzing and flapping and ticking etc. It needs to be attached to close to the entrance. As we are in the middle of winter here – I’m going to tape it to the floor – it seems like the easiest option but I might change that when the weather improves.

Firing up the monitors is the same as the Gateway. Remove back plate. Remove plastic strip. Watch for winking green light. Replace back plate.

Basic Hive Scale

The Basic Hive Scale is a hive scale and monitor rolled into one. Click here for the video overview.

Assembled it should look like this from the top:

And like this underneath – load sensors, one at each corner, with screw-in-feet plus the wiring for the other three sensors:

The hive scale seems strangely bendy when you put it together but it is designed to be flexible to cope with wonky old equipment like mine. It can be adjusted horizontally to fit any hive stand and is also equipped with adjustable feet so it can be levelled if stand isn’t and lets face it they aren’t often.

The scale is designed with mesh floors in mind – it allows the bees to ventilate and the frass to drop through. Nothing worse than a build-up of hive-debris and associated moulds and wriggly wild life.

The feet screw into the load sensors but they should not be screwed so far in that they come up against the carcase as this would disable the sensors.

Here is the Hive Scale weighing a chair:

Note the three sensors on the floor – they are same as the basic Hive Monitor:

Red for brood temperature;
Blue for humidity;
Microphone.

The Hive Scale is fired up in the some way as the Gateway and the Hive Monitor.

Weather Station

If you are lucky you will also have Weather station. Lucky me.

The box on the right is the weather station. It collects the rain and measures it before draining out underneath.

The box on the left with Gateway written on it is the Gateway;
The weather station is connected directly to the Gateway with the thick black wire;
The other wire, the slender one with the white tip, is the sunlight monitor so its tip needs to be out of the shade in full light;
The thing on the far right is a clothes peg.

The Gateway and the Weather Station can be screwed to a board and set out in the open. The weather station in particular needs to be out in the weather. I won’t explain why.

User interface

The User interface is located on the Arnia website. When you get your remote monitoring system this is set up for you. To check that your gadgets are all talking to each other and that the Gateway is sending the information to the Interface you just log in.

This is the screen that will greet you. Note the huge clouds of bees hovering over each hive – this is because the monitors have been listening with us to the very exciting General Election on the radio.

Each icon on the hive fronts lead to graphic displays of those things.

The bar across the top displays information from the Weather Station – note there is no sunshine data. This is because the weather station is still in the kitchen with the Gateway and the Monitors

A click on the cogs icon far right will take you to the dashboard.

The monitors screen (below) will show you whether the components of your system are speaking to each other. If they aren’t there will be no communication data here. Click this photo to see what I mean.

Installation

Once you are satisfied that everything is working ok then you are ready to install the monitoring system at your apiary.

Next week hopefully the weather and my torn knee meniscus will have improved sufficiently for me to do that.

Click here for more about Remote Bee Hive Monitoring and applications

Click here for How to Install your Hive Monitors

Click here for Arnia Remote Hive Monitoring – First Data

Click here for Arnia Bee Hive Monitors

Click here for a video overview of the Basic Hive Scale

Click here for video instructions on how to assemble your Basic Scale

Click here for Arnia Website

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Remote Bee Hive Monitoring

Gimlet — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 19:00:21 +0000

Remote hive monitoring by Arnia is space age technology for bees – all linked up to a central hub on the mother ship over the mobile phone network.

Of course there is no substitute for visiting the bees but a system like this could be very useful not only in preparing your next visit but also monitoring the results of your efforts from a safe distance.

A road test would be handy!

Arnia System

The Arnia system consists of:

Hive Monitors – one per hive;
Weather Station – one per apiary;
Monitor Gateway – one per apiary;
User Interface – one per user;

Hive Monitors

Each hive is fitted with sensors to monitor:

Brood temperature;
Hive temperature;
Hive humidity;
Colony activity;
Weight.

‘How on earth can it measure activity?’ says you. Good question. Well it does what you do – it cocks an electronic ear and deduces activity from the levels of flight noise and fanning noise and all that buzzing and ticking you hear going on when you put your ear to the back wall.

Hives can also be fitted with hive scales to measure changes in weight. This of course will tell you how much nectar is coming in per day, even per hour if you like. It will also tell you how much water is removed overnight as the nectar is ripened.

A sudden loss in weight can alert you to a hive being robbed – such cases may record a weight gain during the day but if this is followed by a big fall it could be due to robbers.

Weather Station

An optional extra for each apiary site is a weather station which will record temperature, sunshine, cloud rainfall, wind etc.

Monitor Gateway

There is a Gateway for each apiary. It constantly gathers the data from all the hive monitors in an apiary plus the weather station data and transports it, once per day, over the mobile phone network to the Arnia hub where it is stored for your perusal later.

User Interface

The User Interface is where you access your data. It is hosted on the Arnia website and you log in over the internet via the device of your choice.

Below is a picture of the summary screen from a User Interface. Here’s what it does:

At the top, left to right, is weather data for the past week followed by battery status and signal strength;
Interlocked cogs icon – far right – accesses User Interface Settings;
The number of bees hovering over each hives indicates the degree of activity per hive;
The different coloured icons pinned to each hive access detailed graphs of brood temperature, humidity, activity and the ambient temperature of each hive;
The two hives on the right (below) are fitted with hive scales and the black icons access weight data.

How do you use it?

Comparison
Management
Alerts

Comparisons

With a system like this which gathers and stores so much detailed information the possibilities for analysis and comparison are endless.

In addition, your own hive inspection data such as queen ID, colony assessment and appraisals, disease data, Varroa counts etc etc can all be added into the pot.

Comparisons between hives, between apiaries and between years are vital to both short and long term projects such as bee breeding, research and good old-fashioned curiosity.

Here are a few possibles:

Comparison between hive types – poly or wood, commercial or national, mesh floor or solid in terms of humidity and temperature. This data could also be useful in conjunction with your own disease data i.e. chalk brood, Varroa, Acarine etc.;
Comparison between colonies in terms of timing and speed of build up, activity, colony size, swarming behaviour, honey production – very useful when selecting breeding material – especially in conjunction with queen lineage information;
Comparison between apiaries – to pinpoint best aspect, altitude, temperature, shade etc to maximise productivity vs swarm reduction etc.;
Comparison of weight data between years in conjunction with weather data and times of day when foraging is at a peak could help pinpoint tantalising stuff like the ideal weather for fickle nectar flows such as hawthorn or heather;

Management

Monitoring can give indications about what is happening out there in your out-apiaries and what you might be needing in terms of equipment, time and energy. Weather data can be used to see if it’s worth going at all!

Queen Status

Brood temperature is steady at 34 degrees C and is tracked by the monitors. This means you can spot a failing queen and/or monitor a virgin to see when she gets going and see that she keeps going. How annoying that is, when you find that the new queen you thought was going like a train and had left alone accordingly actually fizzled out two weeks ago.

Sudden erratic brood temperature also occurs if the queen gets into the supers – that’s annoying too – specially when she puts 2,000 eggs per day into your precious cut-comb?

If you treat your bees mid-winter with oxalic acid you will know that it is vital that the bees be broodless and the hive monitor will tell you this. Even if you were to monitor only your strongest hive going into winter it would give you some idea of the state of the brood in the others.

Weight Data

Summer – It is possible to monitor honey coming in and to know when to add more supers. Weight data can also be used to spot robbing and lost swarms and allow you to arrive at the apiary with all the right gear on board.

Winter – Spot when build up has begun and feeding is necessary

Activity Data

Acoustic data can be used to detect robbing. I’ve heard it said that robbing doesn’t matter – you’re going to take the honey anyway but that’s not quite the point. For a start, the robbing might be by somebody else’s bees!

The other evil with robbing is that it can lead to the death of a nuc headed by a valuable young queen. It’s something that needs to be be nipped in the bud that is for sure. Early detection could be very useful.

Downloadable Data

All the data collected is downloadable in CSV (Comma Separated Values) format for use with Exel or the statistical package of your choice if you really want to go to town with the data.

SMS Alerts

Now this could be very useful.

A variety of systematic SMS or text message alerts can be set up by the user to warn of things such as unstable brood temperatures, humidity or sudden increases in weight which can indicate robbing or a prodigious flow.

Automatic SMS alarms will also go out when a monitor detects something such as theft of a hive or when a hive is overturned. Hives are often overturned in winter when branches fall or stock get in amongst; if the boxes burst asunder the bees can die of exposure if not found quickly. Like taxes and death – thieves are always out there!

As luck would have it – Arnia.co.uk have lent me a monitoring kit so a road test will follow. Watch this space…

Click here for more about Remote Bee Hive Monitoring and applications

Click here for How to Set up your Hive Monitors

Click here for How to Install your Hive Monitors

Click here for Arnia Remote Hive Monitoring – First Data

Click here for a video overview of the Basic Hive Scale

Click here for video instructions on how to assemble your Basic Scale

Click here for how to make your own scale hive

Click here for more about scale hives