Bee farmers will soon acquire a new way of monitoring their hives, check on the swarming activities and keep track of their product (honey) accumulated in the hives.

As the Adaptive Environmental Monitoring Network for East Africa (AdEMNEA) project enters phase two (2), much more emphasis will be put on customizing the monitoring network to the primary stakeholders such as bee farmers and mango fruit growers in East Africa (particularly  Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan).

Agatha Turyagyenda, a PhD student and part of task 2.1 focuses on developing a smart IoT-enabled system for multi-modal edge detection of small hive beetles in managed colonies revealed that a functional prototype was deployed in the field, several tests and processes were done such as;

• Refining the modules (02W), enhancing the system design and adding more robust sensors – camera (5MP-12MP), Weight (up to 100gms), Temperature & Humidity (DHD 1.1-DHD 2.2), Carbondioxide (new set of sensors).
• A dash board - parameters from the IoT system are transferred and visualized on a remote server – use of such data to determine activities taking place in the smart bee-hive.

 

According to Dr. Roseline Akol, a researcher and human capital developer at the College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT) Makerere University says the biggest challenge had been managing power consumption and battery life which has been mitigated by;

• Acquiring a custom-made charger controller which lasts five days and enables duty cycling while sending data at a six-hour interval.
• An alternative solar panel has been attached to the system
• A 2B raspberry pie with a 24-hour battery life
• Use of linear polymers instead of lengthy batteries has been implemented.

“With such system upgrades, the system is able to run for at least 2 weeks before batteries run out or switch to solar which gives hope that it should be ready for roll out in the nearest future,” Dr. Roseline confirmed.

Dr. Mary Nsabagwa, a researcher and computer scientist at the College of Computer Science and Information Sciences (CoCIS), Makerere University says the system has been further customized and should be user-friendly especially working with sensors, “one bar on the hive has been adjusted to enable a tech-novice mount and unmount the microphone, temperature and humidity sensors and can ably insert or remove batteries for charging,” Dr Mary affirms.

Dr. Julianne Sansa-Otim, the AdEMNEA project coordinator at Makerere University confirms that the smart Bee monitor design has been informed by requirements gathered from several stakeholders e.g. Uganda’s ministry of Agriculture, The Uganda National Apiculture Development Organisation (TUNADO) and a representative number of bee keepers and fruit growers.