Honey is a staple item in many pantries worldwide, but do you know how it ended up in the bottle on your shelf? The modern method of honey harvesting uses honey broods, specially designed wooden boxes, to ripen the honey, but there is no system to know when it is completely ready, which leads to crystallization at the time of extraction.
A team of students from Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology has created an alert system to notify beekeepers when the honey is ripe for harvesting. The system will capture images of honeycomb in hourly intervals and processes the image with an output of either “RIPE FOR HARVESTING” or “NOT RIPE FOR HARVESTING.” This system will not only make the beekeepers’ lives easier, but it will also reduce the amount of honey wasted due to crystallization.
This will make beekeepers’ jobs easier, while also economically helping them because they won’t suffer as great a loss of honey anymore. Crystallization would be responsible for about a 25% loss of honey, due to the over-ripening. This system aims to prevent that from occurring because it will continually monitor the honey brood boxes. This will also increase their sales because, with the correct timing, the amount of extracted honey per box will increase by at least one kilogram.
The system will utilize a camera inside the honey brood boxes with IoT sensor modules to monitor and alerts the beekeepers. They plan to start off by obtaining chemicals, glassware, and equipment for honey extraction before they design the boxes and system. EPICS in IEEE has granted them $1,100 US dollars to purchase necessary materials for this innovative system.