Assignment: A short description of an idea for a final project.
An idea for a final project would be a beehive monitoring system, to keep track of the colony's health during the course of the year. This is what IAAC is already doing with their open source beehives, I would like to make a variation on that. Here in Iceland we have a cool temperate climate, the season is very short, we use Langstroth type hives with a ready made wax matrix to get them started and we have to supplement quite a bit of sugar water. The bees are very docile and easy to work with, they are sourced from the Aland Islands and are free from varroa mites. Temperature regulation is generally not a problem for them if one takes care to carry out hive inspections in still and dry weather, but moisture can build up during the winter and kill them. I would like to make a modular sensor pack that could be used with our standard size hives without modifying them, for example installed in a horizontal frame that can be situated on top of the hive, under the lid. I would like to incorporate a weight sensor that would be part of a cowl that fits over the hive, which would be suspended from it but held firmly in sliders, so the natural ventilation would not be cut off, but some shelter would be provided from wind and snow - some snow cover does not harm the colony, but would affect the weight readings. In the top lid, under the roof, I would like to have some way of draining away condensation so it would not precipitate out on top of the colony, but get collected in a container to see just how much accumulates over the course of the winter.
