🧿 Robotic Beehive

We are developing a single-colony robotic beehive capable of automating inspections.

This device will use linear actuators to safely extract beehive frames from the nest, capture photos, and upload them to the web app. AI vision will then analyze the images to detect bees, the queen, cells, and other key elements, alerting the user in case of any issues.

status: TRL 2

Problem focus

Out of all beekeeping issues, this product is helping with these:

• 👁️ Observability of bee colony
• 💀 Intrusive inspections
• 💪🏻 Physical labor
• 🦀 Infestations
• 💀 Alcohol washing killing bees
• 💀 Colony without a queen
• 💀 Colony with drone-laying queen
• 🗃️ Ugly beehives
• 🎒 Challenging to become a new beekeeper

Target clients

Single-colony robot will cost a lot (>2000 EUR) and thus it is not cost-efficient for large scales. Because of this, it is unlikely that 👨🏻‍🚒 Industrial beekeepers or 🧑🏻‍🌾 Farmers (that have >20 beehives) will buy it. Instead, we position it as a luxury item that compliments customer brand.

• 👨🏻 Potential new beekeepers ← as a shiny and safe beehive that can also teach them beekeeping
• 👩🏼‍🏫 Urban beekeepers ← as a way to research how bees are behaving and avoid disturbing neighbours
• 👩🏻 Tech scale-up companies ← for office roof as a brand building hardware and a in-house honey perk

President Alar Karis harvesting honey from the Kadriorg Palace beehives. (Photo: Office of the President) An example of potential complimentary brand

Features

title
🍭 Automatic sugar syrup feeder
🎙️ 6-channel audio monitoring
🎮 Connecting robot to web-app UX
🐝 Bee nursing video analysis
🎮 Client-side app with UI in manual override mode
🔊 Audio-interface to talk to bees
🐝 Bee specialization classification
🔌 Energy autonomy
🛑 Close mechanised hive entrance in case of robbing behaviour
🔥 Hive heating
🚁 Ventilation control
🛑 Mechanically reduce hive entrance in case of high wind
🛑 Close mechanized hive entrance in case of hornet attack
🦾 Robotic frame reordering
🦾 Moveable hive bottom with varroa counting
🦾 Robotic insertion of new frames
🧪 Automatic acid treatment against varroa
🦾Robotic frame isolation & extraction
🤖 Talk to bee colony with AI

Non-functional requirements

Extraction should happen without disturbing the bees, exposing them to elements or risking people around.

• able to adjust to frame size and hive section size of customer’s choice (Langstroth, Farrar, National etc)
• should not harm human operator - @Regulations and Compliance (ex. breaking hands)
• not kill 🐝 bees [squashing with moving mechanisms, cause hypothermia, open to stealing or attacks via cracks]
• be able to extract frame if bees glued it with wax
• not 🔥 ignite from overheating, sun, electrical wiring etc. Beewax is highly flammable
• move frame that is full of honey (4kg)
• be repairable (modular, hot-swappable)
• be offline-first. Provide data to beekeeper without internet or cloud account
• provide manual on-site control over frame movement
• fallback to safe mode on power loss

Prototype

Consists of actuators that can move the frame in/out, GPU, cameras. Very early stage as we’re focusing on Web-app and Entrance Observer first.