Honey bees are the only source of honey across the world but unfortunately they have been facing extinction as revealed by a recent report. Taking this report into consideration, a team of few enthusiastic designers have taken the responsibility to build intelligent beehives. This project is named as Open Source Beehives whose objective is to use 3D printing to make these beehives. These beehives also have the ability to monitor the health of bee colonies. Both professional and amateur will be able to assemble these hives easily.
The hives are provided with a sensory kit with the help of which collected data is sent to the central platform known as Smartcitizen. This information could be helpful in saving the lives of bees and identifying the solution for elimination of bees’ population. Smartcitizen is an open source platform. The sensory kit is devised by Fab Lab in Barcelona which consists of an app, some hardware and a website. The design of the hive is made the way bees make their own. A 3D printer is used to print the parts of hive and then they can be assembled. To circumvent the hazards of glue and screws, all parts are slotted.
The designer says the objective of this project is to give importance to bee colony health. This will not only make beekeeping more accessible for everyone but will also enable to study the health of bees. The users can help the proect by developing sensors to enhance the collection of monitoring data, logging this data onto the internet. So that this data can be studied to analyze as to why the bees are gradually disappearing around the world. This will enable to determine the causes of bee extinction and use it to devise solutions as well as initiate a policy change to move forward.
The sensor send an alert message on the smartphone app in case of some danger or emergency. This could greatly reduce the danger of any unforeseen danger to the colony. This full-fledged hive can be purchased only in US $600 including sensory kit. Shipment takes about 1 month. Can 3d printed hive really help the bees in their survival? It is really dependent on the performance of the hive but these type of initiatives could really play a vital role.