Scheme of digital beehive functioning
Project work pakages
The project has been organized in 4 work packages.
WP1: set-up of the apiary in Serbia and training. CREA IT and the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Agriculture will work closely to set up a demonstration apiary at the Faculty of Agriculture. The apiary will be composed of three sensorized beehives to acquire data for the entire duration of the project. The CREA IT will be also responsible to train the colleagues from Faculty of Agriculture about the digital beehive systems and its main components, including sensors, hardware and cables.
WP2: long term data acquisition and system upgrade. During the project progress the system will work constantly and periodic web meetings will be carried out between partners to verify its functionality, but also to analyze and interpret the gathered data in order to propose connected research activities.
WP3: student training. This WP aims to transfer the knowledge gained by Faculty of Agriculture in ProTechBee to Serbian students. Two actions will be organized: the first action consists in the involvement of students in the set up and control of the demonstrative apiary. The second educational action will consist in the involvement of students into a research activity connected to ProTechBee.
WP4: Matching EU and Serbian perspectives in the agricultural sector. Beekeeping sector bring with it a cascade of agricultural concerns, including plant protection mechanisms, crop pollination, food and seeds production. In the broad vision of including Serbia in EU, the goal of the WP is to identify and propose alignments between EU and Serbian regulations to move toward a uniform food production and environmental protection system.
ProTechBee project was born with the idea of connecting Italy and Serbia in the beekeeping sector to contribute to bee preservation and build an aligned EU-Serbian view toward sustainable agricultural productions and environmental protection attitudes. The project exploits a know-how exchange experience in which the Italian partner (CREA) transfers to the Serbian partners (Novi Sad University – Faculty of Agriculture) the knowledge gained in the prototyping of a digital beehive to allow its replicability. Despite the importance of creating control systems to protect bees at global level, the project will open-up to a cascade of agricultural concerns, searching for gaps to be bridged between EU and Serbia in agricultural legislations. The system, representing a mixture of self-made and commercial sensorized solutions, is capable of monitoring important parameters useful to track the bee health status and the productions; it provides the information remotely, with the additional benefit of a correct planning of interventions in the apiary.
