What is ProBee?

Set of equipment for electronic monitoring of bee colonies, online presentation of results and their evaluation together with records of all activities of the beekeeper.

We are sorry for the fact that some application pages have not been fully translated yet. We are working on this hard.

Who is it for?

Remote colony monitoring system can be useful for all categories of beekeepers.

Beginners need to know what is happening in the beehive and how to respond to detected unusual states.

Experienced hobby beekeepers appreciate when they can deal mainly with the pleasant side of beekeeping and do not need to solve problems in stress.

Professional beekeepers want to be aware of the condition in their hives with minimal demands on personal visits to their apiaries, so that they save time and costs. But when it comes to a need of intervention, knowing the situation in advance will help them take fast and appropriate action.

Generally, all owners of bee colonies who usually cannot visit their bees so often will appreciate the possibility of a remote inspection to see whether everything is in order, as well as getting an alert in case of arising problem.

What can be monitored remotely?

The ProBee system consists of several parts that are offered and can be obtained separately.

- acoustic behavior in the colony,

- temperature in the colony,

- temperature outside,

- weight of hive,

- movement of hive/motion,

- GPS tracking of hive on the map,

- visual monitoring – at the bottom, all apiary, at beehive entrance,

- weather.

All of these phenomena are displayed online in the ProBee beekeeper’s diary.

How much is it?

The basic application is the online beekeeper’s diary. It is available for free and can be used fully without any limits. It is enough to register and open a new account.

Sensors and the connected devices are not for sale; users can rent them from us for reasonable monthly fees. Monthly fees include all costs of hardware, software, service, connectivity.

- acoustic behavior in the colony + temperature in the colony – 2,90EUR per 1 hive (+ 1 central unit needed – 11,70EUR)

- temperature outside – for free (part of hive scale or weather forecast)

- weight of hive – 10,50EUR

- movement of hive/motion + GPS tracking of hive on the map – 3,90EUR

- visual monitoring of apiary/hives – 9,90EUR (1 image per day + motion detection at night)

- weather – for free (part of online beekeeper’s diary)

We are preparing:

- visual monitoring at the bottom (1 image per day);

- automatic recognition of mites in the photo of the screen floor tray with fallout debris, counting and reporting the number of mites in the diary.

At the beginning we charge an advanced 12-month caution payment from which we deduct the corresponding fee for each month in the first year of use. If the service is canceled prior to the end of the 12-month period (e.g. after 6 months), we return the remaining amount.

After 12 months of the use, another advanced payment is not required and we charge only regular monthly fees.

We can give you next information at info@probee.cz.

WHAT CAN IT DO?

Temperature measuring in a colony

It has been proven that following the temperature in the cluster tells much about the states and processes in the colony.

A few examples.

At the time of Varroa infestation, we solve the problem of applying the fumigation treatment at the right time, when the bees are not concentrated in the winter cluster, but they already have only a minimum of brood where the mite could find a place to hide. We do not want to open the hives repeatedly for several times to check the situation inside. How easy it is to take advantage of the fact that bees need to maintain the temperature in their nest between 32-35 °C for the proper evolution of their brood, whereas for survival in the winter cluster without brood they need just about 20 °C.

One of the most important things in the life of a colony is the presence of a healthy laying queen. Once the brood is missing, the situation requires beekeeper's intervention. This state again can be very easily detected by regular temperature measurements. If it is between 30-35 °C, everything is fine in this way.

Many beekeepers breed their own queens and they know that it is difficult to say if and when the new queen gets fertilized. That's why they check the colonies for several times, but it is enough to measure the temperature in the middle of the supposed nest. An increase to 32-35 °C means almost 100% confidence that there is someone who likes warmer environment - the brood. That means everything is working well and there is a laying queen.

At any time of the year and for various reasons, it may happen that the whole colony dies. If beekeepers do not find it out soon, they might lose most of the hive content. If it is not in winter, other bees will find the stored honey soon and pests (e.g. ants, mice, etc.) will cause more damage. Once the trend of temperature in the hive has started to follow the temperature outside, no inspection is needed to get sure that the daily routines in the hive are seriously affected and the colony is getting weaker, or the bees have probably died.

All above mentioned can be monitored by a simple temperature sensor. Currently we are working on a new function - the ProBee system will alert beekeepers in cases when unexpected temperatures occur.

Hive weight measuring

The trend of weight perfectly reflects changes of store in the hive. Many beekeepers wrongly believe that a hive scale is useful only in the season of forage, and then it is just uselessly lying under the hive for the rest of the year. That's not true at all.

The times and periods described in the following text are valid for Central Europe. They can be different in other geographic areas. A smart beekeeper follows the hive weight not only in May and June, when the information helps them decide whether and when another honey super should be added or if it is the right time to start extracting honey. In July, the scale can provide a valuable information about the level of stores in the beehive, which helps to choose the best time of feeding. So that the bees have sufficient energetic resources in the period of creating the winter generation. And if the rare melecithosis honey flow appears, scale will show unexpected increase of weight and beekeepers can react quickly. Once beekeepers know how much of the winter reserve the bees have, they can monitor weight decrease during winter. They will probably find out that bees consume almost half of their reserves in September and October. When the queen stops laying and most of the brood has hatched, consumption of the reserves will drop rapidly, which is seen on the trend of the data from the scale in the weight graph. The colony must survive the whole winter with the other half of the reserves. During long and warm winters, the consumption is higher and monitoring the hive weight helps to recognize and prevent the moment of starvation.

The hive scale is a valuable assistant for migratory beekeepers. An inspiration for them is the project of German society in Baden Württemberg, which has been running since 2005. There are 26 bee colonies with hive scales located in the woods all around the area and registered beekeepers have access to their data through the Internet. Once the weight begins to rise, migratory beekeepers get a signal that it is worth bringing their colonies to the locations with high forage activity.

It is not necessary to monitor the measured values daily - the ProBee system alerts the beekeepers in cases of significant change in weight.

Motion sensor (accelerometer) with GPS tracker transmitter

Just like in many other areas, crime is unfortunately becoming more common in beekeeping too. Cases of hive stealing are real and beekeepers are dealing with the problem of protecting their hives from thieves.

Our device is a small box that can easily be hidden in the hive. It contains a motion sensor that sends the alarm to the owner when unexpected move occurs. The connected GPS transmitter will then send the current position and ProBee will display it on the map. If it does not change, the hive might have fallen off the rack. Otherwise, it is moved somewhere and ProBee can help to track down the thieves.

Visual monitoring of hives through the Internet

It is said that good beekeepers do not open their beehives right after coming to the apiary. They stay calm for a while and watch the rush around the hive entrances from outside. A simple camera can provide similar information without a personal visit to the apiary.

Many beekeepers have seen documentaries with macro video footage of bees inside the hive, so they know that such technologies exist. If they had such cameras at their apiaries, it would be not only very pleasant, but also very useful. In many cases, they would immediately recognize if everything is in order or a colony behaves differently than the others. After storms or gales, they would not have to come to their apiaries to check if there is any damage. They would not have to suffer from uncertainty if there are any pests or vandals and they would not have to decide how often they should open a bottom if the design of their hives makes it possible at all. The view of the bottom part of the hive tells beekeepers a lot; e.g. that it is just the time to extend the space, that creating of burr combs began, that a mouse came into the hive in the winter, or that a suspiciously high number of dead bodies appeared. Not only weekend beekeepers have experienced the situation that they had planned a visit to their apiaries and bad weather completely ruined their plans.

The ProBee system – beekeeper’s diary - enables saving photos to each registered apiary, hive and inspection. In the free version, it is 1 picture for each record. In the paid version with the camera, we allow automatic upload of multiple images and it will provide more, e.g. sending a daily insight into the colony or the apiary.

What are we going to do next?

Modern computer centers have enough power for so called image recognition. Beekeepers are aware of the fact that harmful Varroa mite uses bees for moving between cells. If the system recognizes and counts the mites, it can immediately inform the beekeepers about the level of infestation. At ProBee, we are preparing a Varroa recognition application that will be able to do this.

Monitoring the acoustic behavior of the bees

Bees, as many other creatures, have the ability to express their feelings about what is happening around them. They do it through buzzing at various frequencies. Those frequencies can be monitored and analyzed to bring beekeepers valuable information.

When experienced beekeepers open a hive, where the queen or reserves are missing, in most cases they recognize such state immediately, even before they begin to watch individual combs. Why is it so? Do beekeepers have the sixth sense or do the bees show them somehow? The latter is correct. The beekeepers can hear that the bees are buzzing differently! Monitoring and automatic analysis of acoustic behavior of the bees is a Holy Grail in the field of electronic colony monitoring.

It has been proven that through the analysis of acoustic behavior it is possible to state reasons for the increased excitement of the colony, such as the absence of a fertilized queen, lack of reserves, or on the contrary, increased honey flow, lack of space in the hive, overheating of the colony in very hot days, illness and swarming mood. Every beekeeper can certainly imagine, how helpful automatic recognition of such situations would be.

The ProBee system is connected to a powerful IBM computer center where data from the acoustic measurements are analyzed. The results are sent back to ProBee and displayed in a simple, user-friendly environment.

Online diary of beekeeper’s activities

Almost all beekeepers keep some record of activities they do around their colonies. The forms of record vary from chalk signs on the beehive to sophisticated diaries. Nowadays technologies bring much better possibilities.

Internet applications represent the most perspective method of keeping records with the use of IT technologies. They enable the access to the data from anywhere. Data are not at risk when a particular computer fails, we do not have to worry about backup. Perhaps the only obstacle might be the unavailability of the Internet access. In such cases, there exist a solution, which is printing the required notes before going to the apiary.

ProBee beekeeper’s diary enables keeping records of all work with bees. Even the basic free version allows registering more apiaries with unlimited number of hives. The current weather forecast is available for each apiary. A photo can be uploaded to each apiary, beehive and inspection. Users of electronic monitoring equipment can see records of all measurements and their analysis directly by individual hives registered in the system. The system automatically sends alerts in emergency cases.

What will be next?

Those who have tried any form of online beekeeper’s diary, faced unpleasant fact, which is the complete insufficiency of IT technologies for field work. How long do you think your laptop can work at the apiary before it falls of the hive and breaks? Can you type on your laptop with gloves? And still, there exists a solution - voice control. Even cheap handsfree sets for calling in cars can be controlled by voice. Smart phones recognize voice commands, and accept spoken form of SMS. Why could not a good electronic beekeeper’s diary do the same? Why could not all beehive monitoring devices send the data to the diary in automatic mode?

One day, ProBee will even be able to speak with us.