Hive monitors

[grahamluckhurst]

Hi all,

I'm looking to choose a hive monitoring system. There are quite a few out there, some with weight only, and some with sensors inside.

Of course, when reading on the webpages of the different suppliers, everyone seems to have the best system.

But nothing is better than user experience, so; Are there anyone here who is currently using a system like
Arnia
Beehivemonitoring
IO Bee

Or any other system?

I do not need a giant system, I have remote apiaries that I would like to monitor. One with 3 hives, and the other with 4 hives.
They are a few hours drive from home, and it is a corporate customer. Oh and no; We will still be visiting the apiary each week, but, I would sleep better if I knew that I had some sort of monitoring of the cubes.

Hostabee monitoring
I bought this from Thornes last year, not cheap. I had problems not the usual setting up problems I was excepting, there was no setting up it just worked. HOWEVER do check your hive is in a location that the strange radio signal it uses will reach your hive, both Thornes and the Hostabee website have a link to a coverage map showing signal coverage. It would work from home, Thornes called me check I new what I was doing, nice service. But it worked at the Apiary, as you can see from the image below, but not when I put it in a hive. The long straight lines are from when the monitor was in the hive and I tried it in two.


As you can see it took me until March to fix it. Hostabee sell a Repeater (amplifier). After several attempt to by one (I had to use the French language side of the site) I managed to order one over Christmas, unfortunately Hostabee knew nothing of Brexit and the package was returned to them. In March it arrived with just two instructions to place the repeater at about 2m above the ground no more the 30m from the hive.
,

It worked straightaway and still does.



It also measures humidity. I am not convinced this is useful?

 

[Cral]

Thanks, didn't know about that system.

We have purchased two different systems - smsscales (SMS varga) -This is more of a remote weight system, but, you can add temperature readings, and it will sms\send an email if there are sudden weight changes. And Arnias new system with hive monitor.

We are also looking into getting both of these system into "kubekort" an electronic hive record software we use.

 

[Beegarden]

Sorry, repeated.

 

[Beegarden]

Hostabee monitoring
I bought this from Thornes last year, not cheap. I had problems not the usual setting up problems I was excepting, there was no setting up it just worked. HOWEVER do check your hive is in a location that the strange radio signal it uses will reach your hive, both Thornes and the Hostabee website have a link to a coverage map showing signal coverage. It would work from home, Thornes called me check I new what I was doing, nice service. But it worked at the Apiary, as you can see from the image below, but not when I put it in a hive. The long straight lines are from when the monitor was in the hive and I tried it in two.
View attachment 25469

As you can see it took me until March to fix it. Hostabee sell a Repeater (amplifier). After several attempt to by one (I had to use the French language side of the site) I managed to order one over Christmas, unfortunately Hostabee knew nothing of Brexit and the package was returned to them. In March it arrived with just two instructions to place the repeater at about 2m above the ground no more the 30m from the hive.
,View attachment 25473

It worked straightaway and still does.

View attachment 25474

It also measures humidity. I am not convinced this is useful?

View attachment 25475

If you look on the 'resources' section, it will tell you that when the inside humidity matches the outside, you have problems, particularly if it reaches the pink section. Have you looked inside yet? Actually, reading it on a monthly setting, rather than daily, does make it look worse. I found my monitors useful for knowing when my hives had brood in the Winter, but it did make me fret too much over daily changes.

 

[polymath]

Hi all I am looking for any recent experience, particularly in the UK with hive monitoring systems. Thanks I am looking in particular at weight monitoring and what the cheapest GSM solution would be now on the market, thanks.

 

[Nighthaunt]

I use Hive Heart and Scales on my two hives - that gives me both the internal and external temperatures, weight of hive, frequency and amplitude of noise within the hive.

I get readings from my mobile (hives in back garden) but can get a GSM sender.

https://www.beehivemonitoring.com/e...59G4vElIXAU9ySDj4KN4-1656318506-0-gaNycGzNC-U



The weight drop and the spike in amplitude is where hive was inspected yesterday afternoon.

 

[blackcloud]

If you really can't be there then what are you going to do when there's an "emergency " reported by this thing?
Other than fret.

 

[TomH]

i think you're missing the point. It's not an 'electronic beekeeper', and yes it might actually be of limited practical use in terms of being able to react to it, but for the scientifically and ever curious, they're quite fascinating. I've learnt loads from them, have actually got two monitors set up, both with the internal sensor and weight on hives at out apiaries.

Some of the more interesting points i've seen-

-temperature changes during brood rearing/broodless periods
-number of foraging bees from the weight change, amazing what weather they can fly in.
-the impact of inspections. Can see from the change in audio how they can remain disturbed for hours after being inspected, no doubt as they repair damage etc.
-The june gap is quantified, can track when hives are putting on weight, maintaining or losing it.
-Loss of swarms (weight change)
-Audio signals prior to emergence of virgins
-Temperature increases prior to swarming
-Virgin mating flights (weight change)

It's not changed the way I keep bees, but has certainly added to it. I'm only in my second full year, so it's nice to actually see things like the above, with my own eyes in the data.

 

[JamezF]

This is something I intend to do (at least for my home apiary) at some point, purely because I like playing with technology. I'd try to build as much as possible myself though.

James