BeeThereTomorrow - Varroa Mite

The Problem

The disappearance of bees is not a new phenomenon. However, it has accelerated drastically in recent years due to the massive use of certain pesticides. How to help beekeepers who cannot invest much money and time to monitor hives often isolated in nature? Projects are being put in place. But they often cannot be adapted to all complicated situations such as hives. Against some invasive species such as varroa mites, the only solution for beekeepers is to use some products such as Apistan, but the mites start to be more and more resistant to this product. What could we use to eradicate Mites but not bees? Is there any easy to use solution to clear the hives as much as possible without using Apistan?

Our Proposal

But how do we address the Varroa Mites problem? An interesting solution is to spread oxalic acid inside the hives. This natural acid present in many plants is harmless to the bees but kill the Mites. Winter is a good time to do it, as there isn't much activity inside the hives. But to do this, we need a physical intervention to spray some smoke containing acid... this isn't ideal ! A better way, would be to build a self control machine which will monitor the heat and the spreading time. This device must be easy to reproduce at home and waterproof. For the hardware, we will need : Arduino Nano board, A fan to spread the smoke, a CC2540 BLE 4.0 board to turn on and off the device with Bluetooth on our smartphone and visualise temperature, a thermocouple type-K with MAX31855 amplifier, a buzzer and probably an optocoupler to activate the heat.

We Assume that...

Oxalic Acid is a solution that doesn't hurt the bees while attacking the mites

This solution will probably not completely clear the hives from mites as some are inside sealed brood cells

We will find a piece of metal adapted to the system for heating the acid at 175 degrees celsius (448,15 Kelvin)

Constraints to Overcome

There is several barrier that we will have to work on : 1.how to build/find the metallic vaporisation device that will contains the acid and how to adapt the rest of the system to it? 2. what kind of temperature probes can we use to check it's adapted? 3. How to assemble all together with the electronic to get a waterproof solution? 4. Is it going to work on low voltage battery?

Current Work

First : we need to validate Mechanical design, electrical schematics and PCB. To start, we need to validate the system. Which sensors? How many? Which actuators for the smoke? Once we have found the components, we can look at the 3D drawing of the chamber. Finally, we will produce the first proof of concept printed in 3D and wire the sensors and actuators on a breadboard. This will allow us to test the system at low temperature.

Current Needs

We will need to build the vaporisation device with a sufficient material to resist the temperature. I will probably need some advice to find something to buy or to build it myself ^^ It will be interesting to find an adapted battery as well to start some real testing ! This only missing thing will be... some contaminated hives. But I can probably find some in my area.