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APIS Solutions is proud to announce that they have acquired HiveMind.

This move offers HiveMind customers access to the best in class remote hive monitoring system offered by APIS Solutions and enables further integration between remote hive monitoring and operations management for beekeepers.

This is a natural progression for APIS Solutions who offer the iAPIS product suite, which is focused on unlocking bee potential through a combination of hardware and software solutions. There is a synergy between the two businesses and APIS Solutions is very excited to pick up where HiveMind has left off. HiveMind were a pioneer in the remote hive monitoring space and have had many learnings when developing technology over the past nine years. APIS Solutions has harnessed the learning from HiveMind to ensure that all iAPIS products remain best in class.

APIS Solutions are excited about supporting the HiveMind customers for the up-and-coming season and beyond. All HiveMind customers have received more detail about what they can expect going forward. If you are interested in learning more about how this may affect you, or about APIS Solutions in general, then please get in touch.

Robbed! – Hive Monitoring example

A great example of real-time data turning into actionable information!

We run a number of R&D hives with monitoring technology. We build them up and let them run down to help identify patterns. All the hives have our iAPIS Hive Monitoring system on including an intelligent bottom board with weight and bee counters.

To manage the power consumption we have intelligent algorithms to manage data collection coupled with a battery and solar panel.

In addition to weight, we can count the bees coming in, and going out of the hive. For research projects, we can even break that down to which of the 16 tunnels they are favouring for in or out activity, one bee at a time!

To far away to keep an eye on everything..

While we were at the APINZ conference hundreds of kilometers away we got an alert about one of the hives. We were then able to observe some unusual activity on one of our R&D hives. Take a look at the graph and see if you can imagine what was happening to the hive…

The graph above shows the hive in a weak state, but then all of a sudden having a significant increase in activity, but with a commensurate weight drop….

Ooops looks like we let that hive get to weak! It was now at a point where it couldn’t eject marauders and was being robbed out.

This was a great example of how we can use technology to give us a real-time view of what is happening and build a picture without actually being there. We can then look at the historic visits and tasks, and hive performance to see what thresholds for action should be. In this case in that location and with that weather we now know just how weak a hive can be until it becomes a target for robbing.

Our iAPIS Hive Monitoring module is a tool for beekeepers to make decisions based on data to optimise profitability, production and visit management. Integrating real-time hive and weather data with visit and task planning provides a more complete picture of visit outcomes, opportunities to improve practices, and reduce visits and costs.

We are really excited about the electronic observations and opportunities of having a fully integrated monitoring, works, visit and task scheduling, and extraction/harvest system, and the insights this is starting to provide.

We strongly believe that more beekeepers need access to this level of data to not only improve their planning and operation but to also improve the industry as a whole.

iAPIS modules demonstrated at the APINZ Conference – 2021

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The guys had a great time at the APINZ conference, exhibiting all four iAPIS modules, catching up with clients, and research partners.

1. Hive Monitoring with intelligent bottom board, for weight and bee activity and the solar panel and electronics on the left.

2. Long-range asset tags and asset management integrated with asset tracking and extraction. You can see some of the tags on the boxes

3. Extraction system showing how boxes are scanned, linked to the apiary, and productivity data updated immediately on the dashboards.

4. Works web and mobile tablets and the integration of monitoring, visits, and tasks to bring on the brood, and extraction.

We were really impressed with the presentations and streams on offer, but most particularly (we should declare a high degree of bias for one of our research partners..!) of Gertje Petersen from FutureBees and AbacusBio in the science stream using data from our iAPIS Hive Monitors to show bee flight activity and the first building blocks to understanding “activity vs Foraging”. We fielded many inquiries from other research organisations looking to capture empirical data on hive activity to help with their own programs.

We have a very strong focus on research and optimisation. We took the opportunity to continue discussions with select partners on our new Brood Forecasting modeling and how that can be integrated with works management to bring brood on to match bloom better optimise beekeeping practices.

During the show, we had the good fortune to be able to show in real-time how our Hive Monitoring equipment was able to capture one of our weaker R&D hives in Whitford being robbed out with a significant increase in hive entrance activity, and a commensurate significant drop in weight. That will be the topic of another post shortly.

Thank you to all our clients and partners for dropping by. The next 12 months are going to see some significant new enhancements to optimise both honey gathering and pollination!