Sensor lets beekeepers catch bees before they swarm

Our bee friends have certain behaviors that are unhealthy for the hive and frightening for passers-by. One behavior, swarming, occurs when a hive separates naturally with a group of bees following a new queen. It is a delicate time for the hive and could result in hungry bees and a dead queen. In other words, it’s bad.

A beekeeper, Herbert M. Aumann, has a solution. His system is a small vibration and motion sensor that attaches to the outside of a beehive and transmits data on bee behavior. Beekeepers are able to divide the hives before the start of swarming, and so this system uses the two sensors to capture the behavior before it cascades.

“This sensor is attached to the outside of a hive, near the entrance to the hive,” Aumann wrote in a study in letters from IEEE sensors. “The outward facing sensor is a 24 GHz continuous wave Doppler radar to monitor bee flight activity. The inward facing sensor is a piezoelectric transducer. Unlike a conventional microphone which would pick up the sounds emitted by the bees, the piezoelectric transducer picks up the incident vibrations transmitted by the activity of the bees to the structure of the hive.

The system then calculates the probability of a swarm and alerts the beekeeper so that she can keep her little yellow and black loads safe. When bees gather before a swarm, the sensor will detect vibrations from the event, allowing the beekeeper to stop the activity by modifying the beehive box enough to hold the bees in place. The sensor can also alert the beekeeper to theft events when bees from outside a hive take over an entire hive and steal honey from weaker bees.

“Since I had spent my career building radar systems to track small targets, I figured I could use low power radar to observe bees at a distance of about ten feet. Indeed, I could, ”said Aumann Spectrum. “Surprisingly, the signals picked up by the radar could be turned into an acoustic signal that sounded exactly like the signal you would hear standing next to the beehive.”

He built a startup, MaineBiosensors, to produce these electronic devices for beekeepers who want to keep their honey-growing little friends healthy and happy. He doesn’t sell them yet, but he expects to have consumption models soon.