Beekeeping in Russia

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Russian Honey Market

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2024: How beekeeping is digitalized in Russia

Beekeeping involves many problems that affect both beekeepers and bee families. They lead to a low crop of beekeeping products and the loss of bee families. In August 2024, TAdviser studied the digitalization of beekeeping to find out how things are in Russia.

With the development of wireless data technologies that allow wireless devices to operate for more than a year from small batteries, the digitalization of beekeeping has received a new impetus. Thanks to the use of IoT sensors, machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, the beekeeper can fully control everything that happens inside the hive and has the ability to respond in time to preserve their bee families.

In Russia, remotely monitor the conditions of bee hives.

Scientists from the Youth Research Institute of St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University "LETI" and a group of MTS engineers have created a software and hardware complex that will enable beekeepers to receive information about the activities of a bee family in real time using cellular communications. Monitoring will allow you to notice in time that the hive has fallen, the bees are preparing for swarming, get sick with something, freeze or experience a shortage of food.

By September 2025, all bees must be marked. It is clear that it is impossible to implant in each chip, so they will be marked in groups. This must be done no later than 14 days from the moment the hive is settled or bees are imported into the country. According to the order of the Ministry of Agriculture, an electronic scoreboard should be installed on the outer wall of the hive, read from a distance of at least three meters. It must have a bee family number or barcode for access to the Rosselkhoznadzor accounting system .

In August 2024, it became known about the launch of the first project for the digitalization of beekeeping in the Krasnodar Territory. Rostelecom and MVT digitized an apiary of 50 farm hives in the Otradnensky district. The solution is designed for beekeepers in order to optimize the work of beekeepers, control the yield of honey, reduce the loss of bee families and reduce the cost of maintaining apiaries.

The solution includes various devices for monitoring the condition of bee families, embedded in hives, including environmental monitoring sensors and beekeeping scales. The control unit is equipped with SIM-cards to ensure the operation of the M2M-control service, and the sensors of the complex operate on the basis of Rostelecom's stable communication.

All information received from devices is stored in the cloud space on a server protected from hacking and theft of data located in Russia. This allows beekeepers to quickly receive data on the state of the hives without going to the place and respond in a timely manner to possible changes.

The introduction of modern technologies allows entrepreneurs to establish and automate work processes, reduce losses and increase revenues. My partners and I drew attention to this industry and were able to create a useful solution for it using only Russian hardware, "said Sergey Mordasov, vice president of Rostelecom in the South.

MVT General Director Maxim Bulanov stressed that not only professionals with extensive experience in the design and production of electronics, but also beekeepers themselves participated in the development of the domestic digital apiary. This made it possible to create a high-tech system that will be in demand by beekeepers of all levels.