The Beemon Project Page
The bee population has been suffering terrible losses, however. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has had beekeepers and researchers scrambling for answers for over a decade now. While 19% is the threshold for what are considered sustainable losses, beekeepers are seeing annual losses over 50%. Something must be done to reverse this trend and recover populations.
Beemon was conceived as a low-cost system for beehive monitoring. For more than a decade students and faculty in the Department of Computer Science at Appalachian State University have been working to develop tools to collect and analyze data and deliver it from the hive right to the beekeeper’s fingertips.
It all starts with the hardware. The current system is based on the Raspberry Pi – a low-cost, palm-sized computer. The Raspberry Pi is then connected to dual microphones, a camera, and sensors for collecting temperature and humidity at the hive-site. The system is protected from environmental hazards using a custom 3D-printed beehive-mountable case with an integrated camera mount.
Media and News:
The AppMAIS honey bee project
‘Bee’ Part of Appalachian’s Honeybee Monitoring System Research
