Automated Bee Keeper, 2017 Winner
The Bee Keeper is designed to automate many of the daily and seasonal functions of a natural beehive to ease with the manual labor associated with maintaining and harvesting honey. The Bee Keeper is equipped with
- An organic based approach to fighting the varroa mite which is known to aid in colony collapse disorder. The use of baking 10x sugar is used to distribute not only a food source for bees but which encourages the picking off of the mites as bees eat the sugar.
- An extraction of honey system that eliminates the need for human labor. Weight sensors located in the supers can provide indications of whether the hive is ready to harvest. At harvest time the extraction process includes the use of a smokeless misting process that encourage the bees to leave the hive during extraction. The super is then mechanically placed in a heating cabinet that melts the honey and wax off of the hive frames, which is then collected into a bin at the base of the hive. A thermometer in the super monitors the heat so that the honey is not burned during the process.
- A motion sensor that tracks the activity of the hive daily to determine if the bees are active and healthy, and if the surrounding area is healthy enough to support the bees.
- A tablet/phone app provides data to the bee keeper about the activity associated with the hive to determine the health of the hive in the form of a time graph. Functions like spreading sugar, misting liquid smoke and starting the harvesting process can all be initiated by the app without the bee keeper needing to be present at the hive.