NewswireTODAY - /newswire/ - Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand, 2015/06/29 - Hivemind Ltd have released a new WiFi beehive scale and smartphone app that will allow urban beekeepers, bee educators and researchers, to better monitor their bees and more easily share their knowledge about these vitally important pollinators.

The importance of bees in our environment is a highly topical and important issue gaining increasing coverage. The Bee Informed Partnership recently reported 42% of all hives were lost in the USA in the year to April 2015. In May 2015 President Obama released a,“National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators”. Numbers of urban beekeepers are increasing in many cities around the world and may play a vital role in the future health of the honeybee. This new wifi hive scale and app will help beekeepers build and share their knowledge of what is happening in a beehive.

The scale will be able to directly connect with a smartphone or local WiFi network, and automatically upload the weight and ambient temperature data which will allow interested beekeepers of any size to cost-effectively monitor their hives and record the data for reviewing online, sharing with others, contributing to research or education projects as well as documenting and deciding on how best to manage the hive. The output charts of weight progress can be embedded on company, class, project websites to allow other people to see the progress of the hive through the seasons and so build greater engagement with the hive and increase understanding of bees and their important role in our food system. The smartphone app will allow for photos, notes and other reminders to also be linked to the charts to show the effect of the beekeepers management.

Hivemind have been designing and building remote monitoring technology for commercial beekeepers for the past five years and are now bringing this experience to hobbyist beekeepers, educators and researchers. To help make the technology accessible to educators Hivemind is working closely with US Bee education organizations such as; Planet Bee Foundation, in California, and Sweet Beez, New York State.

A crowdfunding campaign, called "WiFi Bees", for the product is currently live.

Agency / Source: Hivemind Ltd

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