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I had an interesting chat with John McDermott at the IoT meetup in Auckland last week. He said that honey is one of the most difficult markets for IoT. What's

I had an interesting chat with John McDermott at the IoT meetup in Auckland last week. He said that honey is one of the most difficult markets for IoT. What's so hard about it? Connectivity isn't great in NZ - there's no phone signal in the remote places where beehives are common. Artisan beekeepers don't care about analytics to increase their yield; they're just doing it for fun (sometimes after retiring from other careers). Larger companies already have systems in place, or can afford the loss. It seems like it would be an excellent opportunity: beehives get stolen, or overflow with honey, and the temperature and humidity of the hive have a huge outcome on the resulting product. Swarm Space or LoRaWAN might be able to help with connectivity. But the market is just really hard to get into when the customers don't have an incentive to pay for efficiency.

quixoticelixer- 6y ago
Getting stolen is the only thing I could think of, temperature and hive humidity aren't usually problems, the beekeeper doesn't control those things, the bees do. Maybe there are a few other things it could be used for but i'm not sure what.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Hive theft has recently become an issue here in Ca. CA being CA...hives used for pollination services are taxed differently than hives used for honey/orchard pollination. Insurance also treats them differently. More: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/05/bee-thieves-cost-beekeepers-thousands/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/05/bee-thiev... [..] “I couldn’t think. I kept messing up the count,” he told me, sitting at a friend’s kitchen table the next morning, shaking his head. He’d hardly slept. “Over half of them were gone, 160 boxes”—days before California’s almond bloom, the biggest and most lucrative pollination event in the world. “Those thieves stole about $70,000 from me,” he said, tallying the insects, equipment, and lost pollination rental fees. Kuhnhenn, 39—tattooed, with a brown beard, and wearing a black “Right To Bear Arms” T-shirt and jeans—is a commercial beekeeper from Bantry, North Dakota. Like many others in his profession, he makes the bulk of his living from an annual pilgrimage to the Central Valley, where his bees help pollinate the state’s almond crop. In the off-season, back home on his ranch, Bulldog Honey Farms, he manufactures about 80 pounds of summer honey. Wintertime is almond season, and he’d been preparing for the bloom all year. His hives were ready to move into position in the almond orchards. Now was that time, and a bunch of his bees were gone.[..]
  - quixoticelixer- 6y ago
    Theft is certainly a problem with Mānuka hives
- spats1990 6y ago
  The uses I know of are temperature in order to indicate when the bees have started raising brood in late winter/early spring--warmer hive temp=broodraising--and hive scales, which could theoretically tell you when the bees are about to swarm and would allow you to track how much honey the bees are bringing in in real time. Neither of these are a decent value proposition for commercial beekeepers.
- petre 6y ago
  One could have alarms for low/high temp/RH to alert the beekeper when the colony is threatened. Also maybe a weight sensor so they know how much honey there is in the hive. I'm not a beekeper so not entirely sure what they'd want. Anti theft beacons can be easily disabled, especially LoRaWAN and SigFox which need a bigger antenna.
petre 6y ago
Weren't cell towers and phones detrimental to bees' well being? LoRaWAN and SigFox should be okay though since they only send low bitrate, low energy payloads.
neftaly 6y ago
I wonder if you could put a hacked touchscreen digitizer on the bottom of a hive and count varroa mite fall etc

quixoticelixer- 6y ago

Getting stolen is the only thing I could think of, temperature and hive humidity aren't usually problems, the beekeeper doesn't control those things, the bees do. Maybe there are a few other things it could be used for but i'm not sure what.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Hive theft has recently become an issue here in Ca. CA being CA...hives used for pollination services are taxed differently than hives used for honey/orchard pollination. Insurance also treats them differently. More: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/05/bee-thieves-cost-beekeepers-thousands/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/05/bee-thiev... [..] “I couldn’t think. I kept messing up the count,” he told me, sitting at a friend’s kitchen table the next morning, shaking his head. He’d hardly slept. “Over half of them were gone, 160 boxes”—days before California’s almond bloom, the biggest and most lucrative pollination event in the world. “Those thieves stole about $70,000 from me,” he said, tallying the insects, equipment, and lost pollination rental fees. Kuhnhenn, 39—tattooed, with a brown beard, and wearing a black “Right To Bear Arms” T-shirt and jeans—is a commercial beekeeper from Bantry, North Dakota. Like many others in his profession, he makes the bulk of his living from an annual pilgrimage to the Central Valley, where his bees help pollinate the state’s almond crop. In the off-season, back home on his ranch, Bulldog Honey Farms, he manufactures about 80 pounds of summer honey. Wintertime is almond season, and he’d been preparing for the bloom all year. His hives were ready to move into position in the almond orchards. Now was that time, and a bunch of his bees were gone.[..]
- quixoticelixer- 6y ago
  Theft is certainly a problem with Mānuka hives
spats1990 6y ago
The uses I know of are temperature in order to indicate when the bees have started raising brood in late winter/early spring--warmer hive temp=broodraising--and hive scales, which could theoretically tell you when the bees are about to swarm and would allow you to track how much honey the bees are bringing in in real time. Neither of these are a decent value proposition for commercial beekeepers.
petre 6y ago
One could have alarms for low/high temp/RH to alert the beekeper when the colony is threatened. Also maybe a weight sensor so they know how much honey there is in the hive. I'm not a beekeper so not entirely sure what they'd want. Anti theft beacons can be easily disabled, especially LoRaWAN and SigFox which need a bigger antenna.

petre 6y ago

Weren't cell towers and phones detrimental to bees' well being? LoRaWAN and SigFox should be okay though since they only send low bitrate, low energy payloads.

neftaly 6y ago

I wonder if you could put a hacked touchscreen digitizer on the bottom of a hive and count varroa mite fall etc