STINGLESS BEE COLONY HEALTH SENSING THROUGH INTEGRATED WIRELESS SYSTEM

Abstract

Stingless bees are usually common in tropical and subtropical region of the world especially in the tropical dry and humid forest. As stingless bee honey gaining reputation for its medicinal value, stingless bees keeping has been very popular in these regions of the world. In Malaysia, keeping stingless bee has only been very popular only in the last few years. The bee honey industry is a very lucrative industry and in 2013 alone Malaysia imported RM50 million ringgit worth of honey products. Although stingless bee keeping seem to be straight forward, there are a number of issues that could hinder the success. One of the main problems is colony loss which could be attributed to a number of reasons. However, the most important cause for this is stingless bees’ habitat quality. In order to prevent colony loss and honey production impact, an integrated wireless sensing solution is being implemented at stingless bee test-farm to monitor the habitat environmental requirement for healthy and productive colonies. The system consists of sensor structures placed inside and outside of stingless bee hives for monitoring internal and external environmental parameters including hazardous gases. Sensors are connected to wireless sensor networks node places close to the hives and data collected are transmitted to base station wirelessly. A networked of hives with sensor attachment are constructed around the farm to provide sufficient data for comprehensive monitoring. Data from base station are then transmitted to farmer’s mobile device for status update. This integrated system ensures changes to stingless bee hives and colonies development could be monitored real time and necessary steps and actions could be taken to prevent colony or yield loss. In this preliminary implementation comparison between environmental parameters from productive and non-productive hives are looked at especially temperature, humidity, and light intensity data.