Precision Beekeeping (PB), a sub-branch of Precision Agriculture, is an apiary management
strategy based on the monitoring of individual bee colonies to minimise resource consumption
and maximise the productivity of bees. Although there are sufficient technical
means and industrial products for the practical execution of PB, the process is slow due to
the differing states of development of three implementation phases: data collection, data
analysis and application.
The technical execution, adequacy of earlier and current solutions and development
perspectives are analysed to prioritise different challenges for PB. The development of
decision support systems, which is usually a stumbling block in Precision Agriculture, is
suggested to be a mid-term task. In the long term, specific DSS-controlled electronic devices
should be developed to enable new functionalities for PB. Specific classes of actors are
proposed to operate within future PB systems for the automatic execution of suggestions
made by decision support systems, as well as for diagnostic purposes.
PB systems should be optimised by searching for appropriate combinations of different
sensors, and corresponding decision support systems must provide convenient, reliable
and cost efficient solutions. The development and specification of PB systems should
consider business interests, distance to the apiary, expected risks and other peculiarities.
© 2014 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.