🪬 Robotic Apiary
As a more cost-effective solution for large apiaries, we want to reuse Robotic Beehive functionality and equip it with ability to move around the apiary to inspect hives on-demand or on-schedule.
status: TRL 1
Problem focus
Out of all beekeeping issues, this product is helping with these:
- ❄️ Overwintering collapse
- 🌲 Distant locations
- 🌻 Precise pollination
- 🏘️ Multiple apiaries
- 👁️ Observability of bee colony
- 💪🏻 Unscalable work
Target audience
Challenges / Requirements
- inspect multiple (~10) hives, same functionality as robotic_beehive
- cost-effective - use one moveable module
- mobile trailer form - should be possible to move entire apiary with a car. The goal is to transport hives back to the base for winter time, but not rely on a huge container.
Vision
We’ll use an improvement over Robotic Beehive but have it movable between hives. Design is not set yet and its up for the team to decide on the architecture
Apiary - beehives traditionally are positioned in a line Source - https://beeswiki.com/what-is-an-apiary/
Ideation
Movement
| Move on rails | Move on wheels | |
|---|---|---|
| Pros | - simple and predictable movement | - hive positions can be random |
| Cons | - limited reach - hives need to be in line - costs more with larger apiaries |
- need to stabilize the X-Y angles to have horizontal plane even |
Construction
| Monolithic | Distributed | |
|---|---|---|
| Pros | - simple installation, maintenance, setup - good weather protection |
- can scale in amount of hives and in their height - cost effective - healthy |
| Cons | - colonies can infect each other - higher cost - loss of existing inventory |
- more complex integration, maintenance |
Moveable with a car
Example of what beekeepers currently build themselves:
