Flexible Printed Capacitive Force Sensors Based Beehive Weight Monitoring System

Abstract

Honeybees are essential for pollination in agriculture. This paper presents a system for beehive weight monitoring. The system is based on four flexible printed capacitive force sensors. It provides wireless real-time monitoring and eliminates the need of beekeepers to manually measure the hive onsite. Results show that beehive weight has a quadratic relationship with the sensor reader value over 10-80 kg weight range. The system can measure beehive weight with an accuracy of 4 kg. It is low cost, easy to use, light weight and small in size compared to existing beehive weight monitoring systems.