Application of Information Technologies in Precision Apiculture

Precision Agriculture approach has proved to be successful in various agricultural subbranches like precision livestock farming, precision farming, precision horticulture and precision viticulture. Apiculture or beekeeping is one of the agriculture’s sub directions, where Precision Agriculture (PA) methods can be successfully applied. Adaptation of PA methods and techniques into Apiculture, as well as integrating information technologies into beekeeping process can improve the beekeepers knowledge about behavior of individual bee colonies. We propose following definition: Precision Apiculture or Precision Beekeeping is an apiary management strategy based on the monitoring of individual bee colonies to minimize resource consumption and maximize the productivity of bees. One of the objectives of Precision Apiculture in the field of monitoring is to develop real time on-line tools for continuous monitoring of bees during their life and production using the automatic solutions avoiding exposure of bees to additional stress or unproductive activities. The aim of these technical tools is not to replace but rather to support the beekeeper. In passive wintering period it is important to recognize automatically such events as the death of the bee colony and have up to the date information about the state of the brood rearing and food consumption process. In summer period it is important to detect the preswarming, queenless, broodless and other states of a bee colony. Several individual bee colony related parameters currently can be continuously measured and used for Precision Apiculture purposes: temperature by temperature sensors or infrared imaging, air humidity, gas content, sound, vibration of hive, counting of outgoing and incoming bees, video oebservation and weighing. Practical application examples of Precision Apiculture enabling measurement systems both for winter and summer periods are mentioned.