The Open Apiary
Project
Saving Bees Through Data
The Open Apiary Project deploys free ApisNode beehive monitors to beekeepers nationwide — building the world's most comprehensive apiary health database to combat Colony Collapse Disorder.
The Open Apiary Project deploys free ApisNode beehive monitors to beekeepers nationwide — building the world's most comprehensive apiary health database to combat Colony Collapse Disorder.
Beekeepers in the United States lose an average of 40–50% of their managed colonies every year. Without intervention, the pollinators responsible for one-third of our food supply face an existential threat.
By deploying free ApisNode beehive monitors to regional beekeepers, we are building the world's most comprehensive, anonymized apiary health database — empowering researchers and the agricultural sector to forecast swarming, detect Varroa blooms, and track climate-driven stressors in real-time.
Advanced LoRa-enabled ApisNode sensor kits distributed to beekeepers at no cost. Each kit monitors temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, 10-band acoustics, 6-band vibration, a 10-band gas (VOC) fingerprint, and hive tilt — 30+ metrics per cycle.
Daily AI health reports fuse sensor telemetry with peer-reviewed bee science research and voice-transcribed field inspections. Beekeepers receive actionable colony health scores, issue detection, and recommended interventions — automatically.
All data is anonymized before aggregation — GPS coarsened to USDA hardiness zones, user IDs hashed, timestamps smoothed. The resulting database enables regional disease outbreak detection, climate correlation studies, and national pollination forecasting.
Our end-to-end system transforms raw environmental data into actionable intelligence — automatically, continuously, and non-invasively.
Battery-powered sensor nodes install inside hives in seconds. An always-on gateway bridges the apiary to the cloud. Zero configuration required — devices auto-pair via proximity.
Every 60 seconds, each node captures temperature, humidity, pressure, acoustic spectra, vibration spectra, air quality, and orientation — transmitting encrypted data over sub-GHz LoRa radio.
Cloud-based AI fuses 24-hour telemetry with bee science research and field inspection notes to produce daily health scores, issue detection, and recommended actions for each colony.
Anonymized data feeds regional and national health indices — enabling early detection of disease outbreaks, climate impact tracking, and pollination capacity forecasting across hardiness zones.
The aggregated, anonymized database will empower researchers, regulators, and the agricultural sector with unprecedented visibility into pollinator health.
ApisNode sensor deployed between frames in a production Colorado apiary
Every marker is a data collection region — shown by USDA hardiness zone, never by exact location. Explore the live network and read each region's daily analysis.
This isn't a someday database — it's already running. Every enrolled colony receives a daily AI health report that fuses 24 hours of sensor telemetry with peer-reviewed bee science. Every report is published to a growing, openly-archived record of colony health.
of daily reports — published openly and growing every single day, one apiary at a time.
Browse the report archive →We've successfully engineered a V1 prototype deployed across production apiaries. Now we're transitioning to a scalable, grant-funded national deployment.
Custom PCB design, embedded firmware, cloud infrastructure, AI analytics pipeline, mobile app, and web dashboards — all built and deployed in production apiaries with over-the-air updates.
Months of continuous field operation validating sensor accuracy, battery life, LoRa range, deep-sleep reliability, and AI analysis quality with real colonies across multiple seasons.
Filing for 501(c)(3) status to enable tax-deductible donations, grant eligibility, and institutional partnerships with universities and agricultural agencies.
Applying for USDA SBIR/STTR, NSF, EPA, and private foundation grants to fund manufacturing, distribution, and regional beekeeper onboarding across all 50 states.
Design for Manufacturing (DFM) optimization, injection-molded enclosures, pick-and-place PCB assembly, and streamlined provisioning for thousand-unit production runs.
Whether you're a beekeeper, researcher, engineer, or conservationist — there's a role for you in the Open Apiary Project.
Receive free sensor kits and contribute anonymized data to the national database
Access anonymized datasets for pollinator health studies and CCD research
Fund the manufacturing and deployment of sensor networks nationwide
Agricultural agencies, universities, and conservation organizations