Dissertation (MSc Information Technology)
Honey bee farming has been one of the earliest cultural and economic activity practiced by human being, dating back 15000 years ago in north of Africa in the times of the pharaohs. Honey is one of the most important natural products in the world which is produced by bees. However for decades honey bee farming monitoring in developing countries like Tanzania have depended much on cultural and traditional method of monitoring which cost time, money, and resources. Furthermore, efficient tools for monitoring can facilitate in promoting sustainable method that counter this problem at a greater extent. Emerging of technologies like wireless sensor network (WSN) can be used to provide inexpensive management, coordination and intelligent management network for monitoring the bees and helping the farmers in improving the production of honey. This dissertation investigates the application of WSN in smart honey bee farming, identify the proper requirements for wireless sensor actuator network for smart honey bee farming and lastly to analyzes on the performance of the system. Different tools and appropriate open source WSN technologies are identified for the proposed system network, with the aim of encouraging optimal performance and allowing low power consumption to the system. Furthermore the society is expected to benefit from this study by helping the farmers in promoting and enabling effective monitoring method that will be applied in improving honey production in Tanzania.