I think its a neat idea to put the electronics into the cover like outlined at The “BeeMonitor” project by Glyn Hudson. Has someone else done this, too?
many… some of them even claim this beeing part of their patent:
(see also: Patentanmeldungen im Bereich Bienenmonitoring)
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First I thought it’s a good idea also, and we did it in our very first hive monitoring steps:
But you have major drawbacks in the handling:
- every time you want to inspect the hive you have to move the electronics, cables
- you do not intend to measure humidity or temperatur under the top cover or even in the honey super, more interesting data are in the broad area so you have to deal with long cables from the cover to super 2, super 1, in some hive systems broad box 2 to broad box 1, so its very, very difficult to manage a inspection and handle the cables.
- in case you enlarge the hive e.g. with a second super you need more cable, putting cables between combs and – in case you have fixed sensor positions direct under the cover – you have a new sensor position with every task in sense of box adding / reducing.
- scale is still under the hive, I had situations with a full equipped hive @ Massentracht and too short cable from scale to hive top.
For me it is not a good solution regarding sensor positions. Think it’s better to put it under the hive.
An additional thing: In summer time you have very high temperaturs under the cover. We measured high temperaturs in the super and even higher in the feeder we used as electronic storage:
You have some pros also! ;-)
- nice position for all kind of systems submitting data via radio, much bettern than on the ground or under the hive
- for solar power perfect, you can use the top with a solar cell!