I am a beekeeper and I need your help!

I am sure you are all aware that the honey bee is under threat from a variety of sources. With bee hive colonies dieing this has led to an increase in the cost of buying bees to replace them, this has led to an increase in thefts of bee hives.

How do you protect a hive of bees on a farm from being picked up during the middle of the night? We have tried chaining them to the floor, but chains can be cut.

A potential idea would be an electronic device that can send an SMS TXT message to the owner if the hive was tilted. The battery life would have to be as long as possible. This could be hidden inside the hive (in the roof or frames) and so would not easily be seen.

If this could be made inexpensively and effectively then there are over 15,000 people in the UK alone who keep bees.

Is this possible?
Bob

 

If you want to cure the problem vise treating the symptoms, you could install a lo-jack device in one. The one nearest the road or most likely to disappear. once it disappears, notify the authorities and provide the exact GPS location of the bandits.

 

Brilliant idea - but probably too expensive. Ideally I am looking for a solution under £50 ($75).

 

Ah yeah I had no idea lo jack cost so much. Ok how about an unloved cellphone? I know for a fact that android has, and I assume that other phones have, a lost celll phone app. You send a specific ("findme") txt msg to your lost cell phone (lodged inside a stolen bee hive) and it sends a reply with gps coordinates. Might be able to get one used and charge it up prepaid

 

I'd recommend solar powering whatever you come up with. I think battery life will be too limited otherwise. The detector could be as simple as a pressure or limit switch, or magnetic reed switch like you'd use to detect a window or door being opened. I think I'd have the hive sit on top of it, so no part of the circuit is damaged when the hive is jacked.

Sending a text message requires much higher tech hardware than the rest of the system. A simple alarm, even over a walkie talkie, would be much...simpler. Maybe you could use a baby monitor for the radio system.

 

Studies on bee hive distress and the presence of cellular signals has indicated that cell phones and the towers are a LARGE part of the problem.

I would strongly suggest you NOT put a cell phone in or near the bees.

 

How far are you're hives from your house?
If they're close enough to run wires to, a pressure switch could easily trigger an alarm.

You might not even need to send a signal, just include a loud alarm in the hive system and hope that it scares them away.

Or you might even wire up a solar electric fence system to the metal roof of the hive and maybe some wires around the edges of the hive, even if they got the hive you'd still have the satisfaction that they didn't have fun

(we used to have bees, gave up after 5 years of dead bees from the winters around here)

 

Studies on bee hive distress and the presence of cellular signals has indicated that cell phones and the towers are a LARGE part of the problem.

I would strongly suggest you NOT put a cell phone in or near the bees.

Sorry, I had no idea. I don't know anything about bees.

 

But the proposed cellphone wouldn't need to be acting as a phone unless the hive-jack alarm went off. It would just sit there, turned off, until then, but if a theft occurred it would switch itself on and start reporting its position. Presumably then you'd accept that the bees might suffer from it, as the alternative would be losing the lot.

My suggestion is if the hive gets stolen--release the bees.

 

Smithers, release the bees!

Not quite the same ring to it, but it would work on ME. I'm allergic to the little buggers.

 

What about designing a bee hive that can be secured to the ground to e.g. a buried anchor with a chain? The trick is to make the chain inaccessible so it can't be cut without damaging the hive enough so that the bees get away. You'd e.g. need a key on a long shaft to get into a recessed hole deep in the hive to release the hive from the chain.

 

What about designing a bee hive that can be secured to the ground to e.g. a buried anchor with a chain? The trick is to make the chain inaccessible so it can't be cut without damaging the hive enough so that the bees get away. You'd e.g. need a key on a long shaft to get into a recessed hole deep in the hive to release the hive from the chain.

Bees won't "get away" if you open the hive, it's always open in the front anyway

The thiefs could open the hive and grab the frame with the queen on it (which would have to be a lucky guess) and throw it in the back of a truck and every single bee would cling on and go with it.

 

Possibly the simplest solution would be a small circuit board that contains a small signal receiver and peizo speaker. Once the hive is far enough to not receive the signal any more the piezo would go off and the bees would swarm out to sting the unlucky bastard who took them.

 

If a cell phone is off, it will not be communicating with the microwave towers; hence it would not be looking for the locator signal. When they are turned off, they're off.

Now, if one could be turned on when the hive is lifted and intermittently send GPS coordinates to another phone, you'd have something.

It takes awhile for a cell phone to acquire enough satellites to get an accurate GPS fix. If the phone is moving at a changing rate of speed during satellite acquisition, the accuracy of the location fix is degraded.

Not all phones have GPS capabilities.

 

Possibly the simplest solution would be a small circuit board that contains a small signal receiver and peizo speaker. Once the hive is far enough to not receive the signal any more the piezo would go off and the bees would swarm out to sting the unlucky bastard who took them.

the bees would just swarm the piezo

 

When they are turned off, they're off.

Dear Wookie, I believe there is some doubt about this among American conspiracy and privacy "advocates", and The Taliban. The latter were careful to remove the batteries from their cell phones 90 minutes away when making deliveries to Osama.

I don't know the answer, but if cell phones aren't really off when you think they are, this could be a solution for Bob Yelland (op).

I raise this doubt because I wouldn't mind if someone more knowledgable than I posted a well reasoned answer to this, and in the process, cleared up which methods are viable for the OP.

Thank you.

edit: I put this in "off topic" and immediately got referred to the aluminum foil hat department.

 

Everyone knows that the aluminum foil hat as a Faraday cage is only effective if bonded to ground and for best results should be a fully enclosed helmet design.

On the bee theft thing...got any land mines? I hate criminals.

 

Perhaps just several notices posted in various places indicating that the premises are under video surveillance and one or two motion detectors hooked up to a flash bulb(strobe) to imitate a camera flash could be utilized to make the possible perps rethink the whole scheme.

 

the bees would just swarm the piezo

So what can we put on the board, that when it is inside the hive will cause the bees to come out. Only the most determined thieves would carry a hive in the middle of swarming thieves.

 

You could use a wireless transmitter for a security system, it uses batteries. distance might be a problem. They make waterproof switches, which could also increase the distance. You could use the switches in series to hook up multiple hives. Security systems are cheap, easy to install.

I would look into mini micro switches, small and easy to hide. They would need a mounting system independent of the hive.