BeeHive Lab project - sensorized hive for bee colonies life study

The rearing of bees is a quite difficult job since it requires experience and time. Beekeepers are used to take care of their bee colonies observing them and learning to interpret their behavior. Despite the rearing of bees represents one of the most antique human habits, nowadays bees risk the extinction principally because of the increasing pollution levels related to human activity. It is important to increase our knowledge about bees in order to develop new practices intended to improve their protection. These practices could include new technologies, in order to increase profitability of beekeepers and economical interest related to bee rearing, but also innovative rearing techniques, genetic selections, environmental politics and so on. Moreover bees, since they are very sensitive to pollution, are considered environmental indicators, and the research on bees could give important information about the conditions of soil, air and water. In this paper we propose a real hardware and software solution for apply the internet-of-things concept to bees in order to help beekeepers to improve their business and collect data for research purposes.