FAQ

A comprehensive monitoring and warning system about the health of bee colonies provides the beekeeper with the most complete information about what is happening inside the hive and in the apiary in general according to the following parameters:

- sound spectrum inside the hive. Bees are known to make certain sounds at low frequencies. The meaning of these frequencies has been studied quite well and allows us to determine not only what is currently happening in the hive, but also what may happen in the near future. For example, signs of swarming in bees appear several days before the swarm emerges. When bees are infected with the varroa mite (varroatosis), the bees begin to emit sounds at a strictly defined frequency, and they sound at a different frequency when the queen is lost.

- temperature and humidity inside the hive. As you know, a healthy family always tries to maintain a microclimate inside the hive with constant temperature and humidity. Based on the temperature and humidity inside the hive, experienced beekeepers can determine the health of the bee colony and take action to preserve the bee colonies.

- CO2 level inside the hive. So far, our sensors can detect increased CO2 levels by indirect signs - bees make sounds at a certain frequency when ventilating the hive, but development plans are to create a sensor that directly measures CO2 inside the hive.

- weight of the hive. Allows you to monitor honey gain or brood yield.

- shake/roll detection and built-in compass. In case of capsize

- location determination.

- perimeter control and video surveillance camera. The control unit provides for the connection of external devices such as a perimeter control controller based on the contact principle (wire around the perimeter of the apiary) or in a non-contact manner (motion sensor)

Actually, the differences lie in their name, although there are some design features. First of all, the first of the listed sensors is the most compact and cheapest. It allows you to monitor sound and humidity inside the hive and runs for about 1 year on one small CR2025 coin cell battery. Temperature and humidity can tell any beekeeper a lot about the health of a bee colony or club during the winter.

The multi sensors are powered by two AAA pinky batteries, which allow this type of sensor to operate for up to 10 months, which is enough for a full, even the longest season for beekeepers. The sensors are larger in area but in height quite a bit higher than the simplest sensors, which also allows their installation in any place in the hive, including lowering between the frames. These sensors allow you to record and transmit sound to a cloud server, and in the application, in addition to visually displaying selected frequencies, the beekeeper can listen to 10 seconds of each hour of monitoring the hive.

Firstly, it has not been scientifically proven that the frequencies at which the WiFi network operates are harmful to bees. Secondly, the sensors, which are located directly in the hives, operate using the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) protocol, which is orders of magnitude weaker in power than WiFi. In addition, the difference between this protocol and classic Bluetooth is that devices using this protocol communicate only to exchange data to save energy.

Thus, the connection of the sensors with the control unit (hub) occurs only a few seconds per hour and has an impact on the bees, if it suddenly exists, much less than, for example, a cell tower located several kilometers away or the push-button telephone of a beekeeper visiting the apiary once in Week.