Evaluation of theft detection for smart beehives : Development of a Bluetooth-based approach.

Sammanfattning

Beekeeping is an ancient activity that has been practised for thousands of years. Bees and other pollinators are important to food security. Sources indicate that bee-hive theft is on the rise in Sweden. In this report, different alternatives to beehive theft detection are explored. Possible solutions are found by looking at theft detec-tion in general and for beehives in particular. This work describes the different types of theft that beehives are subjected to. Suggested solutions for theft detection are based on activities that might be related to the different types of theft. One of the solutions is implemented and tested. An anti-theft system for cars inspires the solution, and it is partially chosen because it seems novel to the field of beehive theft detection. In the implemented solution, one external unit is keeping track of all the hives using regular check-ins via Bluetooth. Absent check-ins could indicate that a hive is missing. Through testing, it is shown that there is room for improvement inthe implementation, both when it comes to energy consumption and when it detects theft. Deployment costs could be low for situations with a large enough number of beehives at the same place, if the hives are assumed to be smart, this solution only requires one external unit to be added, whereas other solutions might require extra sensors in every hive. For a smaller number of hives, it should be more cost-effectiveto add some sensor that can detect that the hive is manipulated.