Beehive Monitoring and Tracking with the Yabby Edge

Founded in 2016, HiveKeepers is an Australian-based technology company on a mission to improve the health outcomes for bees and increase productivity and value for commercial and private beekeepers globally, revolutionizing the aged-old traditional beekeeping industry by implementing battery-powered IoT asset tracking technologies.

Revolutionizing the Beekeeping Industry with IoT

Beekeeping, or apiculture, is the management and care of honeybee colonies. Honeybees are mostly kept for their production of honey and other products in addition to providing pollination services.

Utilizing the Yabby Edge, HiveKeepers provide hive tracking and recovery, load tracking, and queen bee shipment monitoring for commercial and personal beekeepers. Recently announced as a winner of the Australian Bee-Tech Challenge, they are providing solutions to improve and optimize beekeeping worldwide.

“Four years ago, this type of solution was not viable in the beekeeping industry due to cost, connectivity, and complexity,” says Simon Mildren, CEO and Founder, HiveKeepers. “With the Yabby Edge, we can offer a full tracking solution to beekeepers that is easy to use, affordable, and scalable.”

Yabby Edge for Beehive Tracking

Beehive theft is an ongoing problem for beekeepers that has been occurring for many years. With the production of high-value honey becoming more profitable and colony loss due to an increase in Varroa mites, beehive theft is on the rise.

To better track and manage beehives, HiveKeepers required an affordable, reliable, long-life battery-powered device. The ultra-rugged Yabby Edge uses the latest low-power cellular connectivity (LTE-M and NB-IoT) in addition to a range of intelligent power management features to notably reduce battery changes and operational costs.

With multiple installation options, the Yabby Edge is carefully secured on to the lids of the beehives to offer discreet location tracking. The compactness of the device ensures that there is minimal disturbance to the hives.

beehive tracking

Geofencing technology allows for a location perimeter to be set and sends real-time alerts as soon as the hive leaves a designated location. Beekeepers are then made aware immediately of any issues with unauthorized movements of their hives.

In Australia, beekeepers are also required by the Livestock Biosecurity Code of Practice to maintain up-to-date and accurate location records of their loads and beehives.

With the current threat of Varroa mites being detected in New South Wales, records of hive and load movements are necessary to identify if different hive loads have been interacting with one another leading to potential spread of the varroa destructor disease. An outbreak of this disease could cause millions of dollars lost in the honey and food production industries. The ability to track and monitor hive load activities with the Yabby Edge can significantly reduce the catastrophic impact of the varroa destructor within Australia.

Monitoring Queen Bee Packages

Queen bees play a vital role in the survival and productivity of a beehive. According to a feature article from The ABC, “Postage delays are causing a massive headache for queen bee breeders and keepers, who say crucial stock is turning up dead or going missing.”

HiveKeepers places Yabby Edge devices into the packages containing queen bees allowing for breeders and keepers to be always informed of the whereabouts of their packages.

In addition to Indoor and Outdoor location tracking, the Yabby Edge can monitor temperature changes of each queen bee package. Studies have shown that temperatures above 40 degrees can affect a queen bee’s survival and ability to keep laying eggs. The devices monitor the temperatures of the queen bee packages during delivery and ensure they are kept within a healthy temperature range. Tracking temperature changes lets beekeepers be at the forefront of planning their re-queening activities.

“With the Yabby Edge, we are able to offer both location tracking and temperature monitoring in one device,” says Mildren. “Tracking queen bee deliveries for our partners also decreases delivery issues and delays and brings confidence to the breeder and beekeeper.”

queen bee monitoring