New project in the PLCnext Technology community: The Beehyve – with swarm intelligence towards the future of sustainable automation

“The Beehyve” is a Phoenix Contact PLCnext Technology community project. With the help of our bee friends and technical specialists from the fields of OT, AI, IT, Cloud, and Data, a community project is set to get underway and anyone can participate.

In order to make life easier for honey bees and make a sustainable contribution to the environment, the goal is to develop an innovative solution for a fully automated hive through intelligent automation. Based on the various problems and challenges faced by bees and beekeepers, five categories have emerged. These provide a guide and distinguish between the different approaches for improving bee culture, namely “Bee Care”, “Support the Beekeeper”, “Enhance the Beehive”, “Bee environment”, and “Bee creative”.

For example, to contribute to bee-friendly beekeeping, the “Enhance the Beehyve” category looks at how automation can help simplify manual processes through OT, AI, IT, Cloud, or Data. Based on these five approaches, the community can decide individually how it wants to contribute to the preservation of bee culture.