About 4Bees
Many environmental factors and human interventions in our natural environment are making survival increasingly difficult for bees. Beekeepers' work is often becoming more demanding and yielding even lower returns. 4Bees aims to counteract this development with various means.
The goal of 4Bees is to improve the quality of life of beekeepers and bees.
4Bees' first product was the BeeMobil - Das mobile Bienenhaus. The idea of a mobile bee house immediately won me over when a fellow beekeeper showed me a photo. However, it took some time to implement until all the details were worked out. The BeeMobil has been inhabited for about a year now and has far exceeded expectations. Working with the bees is a lot of fun, and the time required has been drastically reduced.
The next step in the process would be an online beehive scale. Many trips to the apiary could be avoided if the beekeeper were constantly informed about honey input and consumption. The development of microcontroller platforms such as Arduino has made this process much easier. The current weight of a bee colony can now be transmitted from any apiary to the internet via a GSM network. The data can then be stored in a database and visualized and evaluated using various tools. An online beehive scale is extremely helpful in avoiding unnecessary car trips.
The next step will be to store and evaluate data from various locations over a longer period of time to subsequently create forage forecasts. Reliable forage forecasts could, of course, significantly simplify the beekeeper's work and increase yields.
Many books have been written about the best hive systems and the associated correct hive system. This demonstrates how important this topic is for a successful beekeeping operation. Most of the work a beekeeper does is constructing frames and hives and keeping them clean. Hygienic equipment is also a basic requirement for healthy bees. Therefore, one focus of 4Bees is on improving hive systems and equipment for efficient beekeeping operations.
Last but not least, 4Bees is intensively involved in queen breeding and the propagation of bee colonies. Young, vital bee colonies increase yields and are also significantly more resistant to bee diseases. The principle of quality over quantity applies here, because only a strong, healthy bee colony produces a surplus of honey while requiring less work.
Bees, Bee hives, Bee house, beehive scales - 4Bees for bees and beekeepers.