Developing a solar powered electronic hive scale to

compare Flow™ and Langstroth hive performance

Andrew Wootton1, Emily Grace2
1The Beekeepers Club Inc., Melbourne Australia
2Beeinventive Pty. Ltd. PO Box 8 Suffolk Park NSW 2481 Australia
Objective

 
Arduino
Simple, inexpensive
microcomputer boards used
for DIY projects

Digital and analog

Input/Output (I/O) pins
allow connection of a wide
variety of sensors and
electronic devices
Moja Mbili Autonomo SodaqONE
Load cells

hivetool.org
Costs

Sodaq + GPRS Bee + SIM € 110

Load Cell Amplifier € 10
Load Cells € 20
Miscellaneous € 20

Total € 160
Data handling: ThingSpeak
ThingSpeak™ is an
IoT* service that
allows you to store
and visualize live
data streams

Data is sent using

an HTTP request

*The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of computing

devices and objects with unique identifiers that transfer
data over a network
Smart Actions: ThingSpeak

Trigger Action

eg No data, Tweet,
low battery, SMS,
weight loss HTTP request (eg Slack)
Slack - Collaborative Messaging Tool
Validating scale measurements
45

40 y = 1.0097x - 0.1682

35

Rain 30

Hive scale reading kg

25

20

15

10

0
0 10 20 30 40 50
-5
Actual weight kg
 Hive Scale Calibration

40
39 5 weeks data
minimum = 34.6 Kg
38 maximum = 35.0 Kg
37
36
35
Kg

34
33
32
31
30
4-Jun-16

9-Jun-16

4-Jul-16

9-Jul-16
14-Jun-16

19-Jun-16

24-Jun-16

29-Jun-16

14-Jul-16

19-Jul-16
From Workshop to Citizen Science

Originally 10
participants from
Melbourne to build
single scales
Flow donates 10
hives with additional
sets of load cells

? Do differences in honey harvesting regime effect

total honey yield over a season or alter bee
behavior ?
Requires harvesting in concert and data
consistency with good record keeping
 Location: SS
90

80

70

60

50 Langstroth
Kg

40 Flow

30

20

10

0
 70
Location: GB
60
50
40
30
Kg

Langstroth
20 Flow

10
0

70
Location: GS
60
50
Langstroth
40 Flow

30
Kg

20
10
0
Inferences
With only limited data so far, little overall
differences in honey collection between hive
types can be demonstrated
eg Langstroth +8% Flow -3%
Langstroth -6% Flow +14%

The strength of the colonies had more effect on

weight changes than the hives
Obtaining data that is robust enough to answer
the original questions may be challenging
Tracking hive weights was useful for management
decisions
A glimpse of the future:
low-power, wide-area technology

Technologies aimed at low cost and

power consumption for IoT without
requiring 3G or WiFi

LoRaWAN is a long range and low

power radio frequency protocol

Low cost networks being crowdsourced

worldwide

GeoWAN developing integrated scale

microprocessor unit with LoRa modem
LoRaWAN data from a Langstroth
(NB: Melbourne in winter)

LoRa Scale
30
29
28
27
26
25
Kg

24
23
22
21
20
Interpretation
Equipment for remote monitoring is now
inexpensive

Commercial and DIY solutions are

available allowing data-driven questions
and answers

Useful data and alerts can be accessed via

smart phone