IoT powered smart beekeeping – realization of an intelligent and energy efficient remote bee monitoring system for increased honey production

Abstract

Beekeeping in Africa has been practiced for many years through successive generations and along inherited patterns. The activity has basically been traditional and of non-commercial nature, where honey is used as a food product, medicine and for brewing traditional liquor. Despite support from development organizations and other stakeholders, the sector remains underdeveloped. Among the challenges include, lack of access to consistent and business driven markets for their bee products, the decline in the honey bee populations due to colony collapse disorder (CCD) and scant availability of information on the environmental conditions surrounding the beehives a consequence of a lack of real-time monitoring and evaluation systems. IoT technology has potential to enable real-time access to information about physical parameters and how they impact honey production. This thesis explores development of self-powered smart bees hiving and monitoring systems and challenges facing beekeepers in Rwanda. First, with help of beekeeping cooperatives of Nyamagabe and Nyaruguru districts studied the economic potential of beekeeping through technology integration. As per the requirement self-powered IoT bee monitoring system was developed. The system interconnects different sensors such as temperature sensor, humidity sensor, piezoelectric transducer which works as a weight sensor, motion sensor and flame sensor framework. The thesis the beekeepers were able to remotely monitor the hives through their mobile phones via an App that had been developed. For farmers that have no smart phones, the system integrates a GSM module, thereby supporting remote monitoring via SMS messages and makes the system deployable in areas with poor Internet Infrastructure. With autonomously powered modules, various energy harvesting methods have been explored, namely, (i) energy harvested from bee ‘s vibration, (ii) energy harvesting through the piezoelectric transducer, and (iii) Radio frequency energy harvesting. To ensure that the system communication is done in an energy efficient manner, an energy efficient algorithm was developed and tested. The algorithm is suited for smart beekeeping systems that employ Device to Device communication based on data aggregation techniques Any technological system deployed to monitor beehives needs to be unobtrusive and should have reliable source of power for the system to be usable in rural settings, which is where most beehives are located. Traditionally, batteries are used as the electrical energy power sources to power wireless sensors and embedded electronics. However, batteries have a limited life span and they are expensive to maintain and hence they are not a long-term viable source of energy for wireless sensor network WSNs and embedded systems. The use of solar energy is also not viable since beehives are mostly positioned under thick canopy. Hence, there is need to explore alternative sustainable energy source suitable for use in beehive monitoring systems. In this research we explore energy harvesting as the most promising way of overcoming the challenges of sustainable energy source for remote beehive monitoring