Beehive monitoring can provide useful information for people associated with beekeeping to help to manage their honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies. The information obtained from the monitoring process can contain data about beehive's temperature, humidity, weight etc. Such a monitoring system is a practical tool in Precision Beekeeping. Honey bee colonies can be monitored using various system architectures that are different in methods and approaches. Since there are several monitoring system architectures, beekeeper himself should choose the one that suits his needs. To facilitate the beekeeper's choice of the suitable architecture, a selection algorithm was developed. This paper focuses on different automatic monitoring system architectures for real-time beehive temperature monitoring, distinguishing their advantages and disadvantages

Future of the traditional beekeeping is to implement smart apiary management and start to use automatic and remote tools for bee colony monitoring together with beehive control mechanisms to improve bee colony productivity. Within the ERA-NET ICT-Agri project “ITAPIC” different bee colony monitoring and control systems together with its combinations were introduced and analysed. This paper presents authors vision for implementation of Precision Beekeeping together with the smart apiary concept. Different parameters of the bee colony can be monitored: temperature, humidity, gas content, sound, vibration etc. Continuous monitoring of some bee colony parameters is very challenging and not user friendly, allowing using it only for research purposes, not for practical implementation by the beekeepers. Precision beekeeping idea is to introduce tools that can be easily implemented into beekeeping practice. This paper describes developed systems and its combinations for successful smart apiary management. Developed systems are based on temperature, sound and video monitoring. Both data transmission types: wired and wireless are applied and compared. As well discussion of automatic beehive heating or/and cooling system implementation into practice is opened. As apiaries usually are placed outside in rural areas, important part of the smart beekeeping is usage of alternative energy for powering all the devices. Most suitable alternative power supply to this moment is usage of solar power with solar panels, which can be mounted on the hive. Together with hardware part it is needed to develop software part for data observation. Software part should be developed as a web system or/and mobile application. Cloud system with decision support functionality and with additional option for informing the beekeepers about changes in the state of the bee colonies could be considered as well.

The European Union funded project SAMS (Smart Apiculture Management Services) enhances international cooperation of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and sustainable agriculture between EU and developing countries in pursuit of the EU commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goal “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”. The project consortium comprises four partners from Europe (two from Germany, Austria, and Latvia) and two partners each from Ethiopia and Indonesia. Beekeeping with small-scale operations provides suitable innovation labs for the demonstration and dissemination of cost-effective and easy-to-use open source ICT applications in developing countries. SAMS allows active monitoring and remote sensing of bee colonies and beekeeping by developing an ICT solution supporting the management of bee health and bee productivity as well as a role model for effective international cooperation. By following the user centered design (UCD) approach, SAMS addresses requirements of end-user communities on beekeeping in developing countries, and includes findings in its technological improvements and adaptation as well as in innovative services and business creation based on advanced ICT and remote sensing technologies. SAMS enhances the production of bee products, creates jobs (particularly youths/women), triggers investments, and establishes knowledge exchange through networks and initiated partnerships.