Tag Archives: Warré beehive

POPULATING THE WARRE HIVE

Wednesday 12/06/2013 I’ve started a new colony in the Warré hive. It was a precarious undertaking. Due to bad spring weather, nature is a month late. I controlled all the hives on swarm cells, but in none of the 5 hives the bees had the tendency to swarm yet, no new queens in the pipeline! Thus I had to make an artificial swarm which can create its own queen.
First I adapted 2 capped honeyframes from the size of a Kempische hive to the size of a Warré hive – I had to make the frames a lot smaller. As I had to cut into the honey cells, this became quickly a very dirty setup. Continue reading

DANCING WITH THE BEES

During the past three years, Okno has been exploring the potential of sensor-equipped beehives. Making use of innovatory technologies, we are studying bees as biomarkers providing information about the ecosystem they are part of. The collected data are stored in online databases, mapping the urban landscape and raising awareness of this shared living environment, and are used for the creation of ecological works of art. Earlier this month, Annemie Maes from Okno was organising a bee monitoring workshop at Valldaura Self Sufficient Lab in Barcelona. Continue reading

BEE MONITORING WORKSHOPS AT VALLDAURA, BARCELONA

April 10/11/12 2012 part#1 of the Bee Monitoring sessions was organized at Valldaura. The first part of the project focuses on the monitoring of beehives through sensors while exploring different materials and appliances of the beehive itself. The idea is to consider the bees themselves, and their behavior and reactions, as sensors of the environment that inform us on the quality of air, water, the diversity of plants … sensors of nature and a healthy environment. The current interns prepared for the wokshop by building a natural structure with the local materials. This structure will be used to give shadow to the area where the first beehive will be placed. It will be extremely important during the hot, dry summer days. Annemie Maes, from OKNO, a Belgian non-profit organization, conducted the workshop where the interns were introduced to the basics of apiculture, beekeeping, and the nature of bees in general.

FabLab Academy students have been working for weeks, building an open structures beehive. They constructed three items, one to be located on the rooftop of Iaac, one for Valldaura, and one for Okno. The beehives will be filled with sensors (temperature, humidity, Co2, dust). The sensors will track changes inside the beehive and allow us to study how environmental factors affect the beehive and bees’ behavior, as well as how that data can be used as an environmental sensor itself.
The first open source Warré beehive was assembled by the interns, guided by Annemie Maes, and placed in the area that had been prepared for it the previous days.

Part#2 (2 en 3 mei 2013) van de workshop series. De eerste dag zijn we de zwarte bijen gaan halen (Apis mellifera mellifera) in Lleida, 2 uur rijden van BCN, binnenland Catalunya. De bijen kwamen mee in een verluchte kartonnen doos, en ze zaten al op topbars van Warre-maat: 5 frames en 1 koningin.
Toegekomen op de Valldaura-site prepareren we de transfer van de travelbox naar de warré hive. John (zijn eerste job als newbee beekeeper) heeft net de sensors afgewerkt. 2 T° en 1 humidity inside, T° en humidity outside. Hij zal de data elke nacht via een laserconnectie doorsturen naar het Valldaura huis, vermits de site geen wireless heeft. De data worden nu tijdelijk gesaved op een SD card die op de smart arduino met bee-shield gemonteerd is. De sensors en smart arduino worden gepowerd door een zonnepaneel dat naast de hive staat. Hier maakt John de connectie met het panel. Connectie van sensors en arduino werkt, data komen binnen en worden opgeslagen.
Ai! Een onvoorzien feit! Omdat we de originele plannen van de Warré hive hebben aangepast naar de grid van OpenStructure, zijn de binnenmaten van de hive een klein beetje veranderd. De diepte is 1cm korter geworden, en dit geeft uiteraard problemen, want ipv. dat de nieuwe bijen op topbars geleverd zijn, zitten ze op full frame Warré frames. Dwz: 1 cm te hoog! What to do now? De box sluit uiteraard niet meer, en de verschillende lagen boxen kunnen niet meer gestapeld worden.
Er zit maar 1 ding op: alle bijen afschudden van de frames in de onderste box van de Warré, de 2de box wordt hierbij gebruikt als trechter. Nu maar hopen dat we de koningin niet kwijtraken in deze transactie! Het is blijkbaar gelukt: de meeste bijen zitten in de hive, en de bijen die buiten achterbleven lopen zelf naar binnen, een teken dat de koningin binnen zit. De hive wordt vastgezet met spanriemen als voorzorg tegen curieuze everzwijnen. Onder de hive hangt de plastic box met arduino en andere technologie. De outsite tmp en hu sensors zijn beschermd tegen vocht. Transfer gelukt.

Part#3. We make a second warré-hive in the fablab BCN for the Valldaura apiary. We will create an artificial swarm, a split from the first colony. Sunday 30/6, a beautiful sunny day, we open the first warré hive, which is setup now with 3 boxes. The last box was added (nadiring or adding from beyond) 1 week ago. The colony developed very well over the first 2 boxes, the last box was not build out yet. It is remarkable that capped and fresh honey, pollen and open and closed brood are all mixed, on all frames. In a regular hive (kempische, langstroth, dadant, …) the different elements are well divided per frame, in concentric circles. Here, in the warré, the cells are literally mixed: honey and larves, pollen and queen cells. Yes, there are a lot of queen cells in the hive.
I take some full honey frames as a basis for the new hive/colony. Than I add a frame with pollen, there are also several queen -cells on that frame. As 4th and last frame we add a frame with closed and open brood. I cannot detect the queen immediately in this bunch of black bees, but no worries: or she stayed in the parent hive, or she is tranferred to the new hive. In both hive there are enough fresh & closed queen cells, so that a new queen won’t take to long to start laying and continue the maintenance of the colony.
At last, I shake off as many young bees as possible into the new hive, and we hope that the regular hive-life will go on as soon as possible. Best would be to control in ± 3 weeks (when the larves of all the presently closed brood cells will be born). If there will be new open and closed cells, we can be sure that the queen is at work!

MAPPING THE VALLDAURA GREENS

Mapping the foraging areas at Valldaura:
Calendula officinalis, Malva, brassicaceae, Quercus ilex, Arbutus unedo, erica, blackberries, Hedera helix, Ruscus aculeatum, Lobularia maritima, Sambucus nigra, wild mint, cherries, apples, strawberry tree, Rubia peregrina, Ruta graveolens, Asphodelus fistolosus, Diplotaxis erucoides, almond, apricot, Plantago lanceolata and Plantago major, wild lavender, Viburnum (tinus), Foeniculum vulgare, Populus nigra (good for propolis), Celtis australis (edible), Chelidonium majus (stinkende gauwe – medicinal), Fragaria vesca, Urtica (netel), Bursa pastoris, Hypericum perforatum, Thymus, Rosmarinus, Asparagus acutifolius, Melissa, Santolina chamaecyparissus (cotton lavender), …

Cerdanyola PlantesFlora CatalanaPermaculture Plants

program

About the Valldaura workshops:

PREPARING THE BEEHIVES AT FABLAB BARCELONA

In a few days the OpenSource Beehives workshop will be hold in Valldaura. Meanwhile, Jonathan Minchin, John Rees and Ferran Masip, three students of the FabLab Academy, have been working for weeks on the actual physical beehives and the sensors that will be inside them. It’s been a process of research to find and create the best prototype, modeling, printing and milling the parts for the final assembly; while circuits where printed, soldered, and lots of programming and testing was happening. There will be – at least – three final beehives, one to be placed in Valldaura, one to be placed on the rooftop of Iaac, and another to be shipped to Belgium, at OKNO. Continue reading

SENSOR RESEARCH

The Warré-model is by definition a hive-model for sustainable beekeeping, as the bee colony can develop at its own pace instead of being controlled by the beekeeper (nadiring the boxes, no queen excluders, ‘optimal’ temperature regulation). The Warré model is not the ‘best commercial model’ concerning the amount of honey production, but it is sustainable as it does not stress the bees with ‘overproduction’ (honey taken away by the beekeeper). The hives in the network are by preference on different locations, so that they can give us information on the bee colonies at these different locations (city, rural, …) and eco-information on the environment they are set in. Goal is to compare the collected data sets of these locations, as well as the wellbeing and behaviour of the bee colonies.
For now, we have basic sensors (t° in/out, humidity) in a hive Barcelona, and in several hives in Brussels, on different locations:
⇒ we can send the sensor data of these 3 hives to the http://opensensordata.net/ database that Peter has set up
⇒ on the t° data values we should do a computational correction, as the t° sensors are located only on 1 spot in the hive, and the values they give are thus very influenced by the outside t° values.

To have a better read-out of the t° in the hives, we are developing the 3D t° sensing system with the thermistors. If this works out, it should provide us with the correct t° values in the hive (box), as well as with the behaviour (movement) of the bees inside of this monitored box.
The new 3D system should give a detailed read out, but it is also very complex and time consuming to install. Every box has 8 frames x 8 thermistors, this makes 64 thermistors per hive-box to be soldered/attached to the frames, + connected to the PCB board. Every box has its own PCB board. Knowing that 1 (Warré) hive has an average setup of 4 boxes, we can calculate that it will be a huge amount of work to monitor the t° in 3D in the hive with this system.

We are finalising the first ‘bee-box and’ (3D temperature sensing) and we’ll install it in the Brussels (so-on) Warré hive and connect it to the internet to have a daily monitoring, as well on line (data values and 3D visualisation) as physically (control the hive regularly). Once we know that the 3D thermistor t° system is working as we expected, we can extend it to the other hives. Therefore we should make a subcontracting working plan, as there is a lot of physical work connected to it and most of us don’t have the time to do it. We should monitor the bees like this for a season, at least through winter till next spring’s development, and work with the data and see how correct they are. While monitoring the system like this for a while, with the findings and results, we should work on a simplification of the monitoring model so that we can adapt the monitoring to later (organic) models of intelligent beehives.