ITAPIC
Application of Information Technologies in Apiculture (2013 – 2016)
Project No. Z/13/1128
Source of funding: The project has been funded within the ICT-AGRI 2012 call for transnational research projects.
Project period: 01.08.2013 – 31.07.2016
Project costs: 760 000 EUR
Project leaders: Professor, Dr. sc.ing. Egils Stalidzans and Dr.sc.ing. Aleksejs Zacepins
Project objective:
The main aim of the project is to apply precision agriculture principles in beekeeping utilizing existing industrial resources and newest achievements in information and communication technologies. 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. Project main goal is to identify different states of the bee colony and prevent colony losses.
Project summary:
ITAPIC project proposes implementation of precision agriculture technologies and methods in the beekeeping. Precision agriculture approach is adapted for beekeeping based on the various measurements of individual bee colonies all year around thus detecting different states of colonies and apiaries enabling rapid reaction by the beekeeper in case of necessity. Digital measurements such as temperature, humidity, audio and video can be used to detect several states of a bee colony: swarming, broodless stage, brood rearing, illness. Lots of separated scientific research has been done with this techniques related to bee biology, but they have never been combined to develop a apicultural health observation and warning system.
The main aim of the project is to apply precision agriculture principles in beekeeping utilizing existing industrial resources and newest achievements in information and communication technologies. 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. Project main goal is to identify different states of the bee colony and prevent colony losses. Developed automatic system could help to determine states of the colony alerting the farmer if any aberrations from normal states are metered realizing the Precision Apiculture approach. Resulting optimization of operational costs and colony losses would increase the profitability and stability of beekeeping.
The system will be based on measuring techniques which are established in the use with bee hives. These are microclimate and environment measurements, hive acoustic analysis and video observation techniques. Lots of separated scientific research has been done with this techniques related to bee biology, but they have never been combined to develop an apicultural health observation and warning system.
More information about the project can be found on the project website.
Aarhus University, Denmark
University of Kassel, Germany
Gaziosmanpasa University, Turkey
The developed automatic system can facilitate the determination of different states of the colony alerting the farmer if any aberrations from normal states are metered realizing the Precision Apiculture approach.
The system is based on measuring techniques which are established in the use with bee hives. These are microclimate and environment measurements, hive acoustic analysis and video observation techniques.
Stalidzans, E., & Berzonis, A. (2013). Temperature changes above the upper hive body reveal the annual development periods of honey bee colonies. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 90, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2012.10.003
