2023 · February 10, 2023
In beekeeping, you don't just get to mess with the unpredictability of living creatures, you also get to tinker, build, and invent machines. HoneyPi and Beelogger, Hani-Mandl and an automatic labeling machine are good examples. The garden beekeeper has been tinkering for as long as he can remember, interrupted only by the phase of life when the children were young. For a long time, the focus was on remote-controlled flying machines, and on various carpentry work. It was not until 2019 that he...
2023 · January 09, 2023
Being able to make your own, self-constructed components is pretty nice. Here is an example: What was needed was a latch for some 40 ban combs, a part that isn't offered in commerce like that. The part can be created within a very short time: 1. create a sketch in the 3D CAD program 2. render construction photo-realistically (optional) 3. place part on printing plate 4. automatically multiply and arrange on printing plate 5. slicing (calculation of control commands for 3D printer) 6. assembly...
2021 · December 19, 2021
The days are short and there is not much left to do with the bees. Time for a new craft project! 6 Beelogger hive scales are being built - 3 for the garden beekeeper, and 3 for his beekeeper mentor. The hive scales will regularly send the hive weight, temperature and humidity to the cloud via LTE mobile communications. This data can be accessed at any time from anywhere in the world. So if the garden beekeeper ever travels to Japan, China or America again, for example, or sits on the couch and...
2021 · August 04, 2021
For the first time, the automatic filler and the labeler are used simultaneously. In the video, you can see that the processes are well coordinated and that it takes just 20 seconds to fill and label a jar without having to hurry particularly.
2021 · July 14, 2021
DOKUMENT est mort. Vive DRÖNJÖNS! Quickly built a few artificial swarm boxes for little money. Also well suited for capturing and transporting natural swarms :-)
2021 · April 10, 2021
The time-consuming (and contemplative) process of manual labeling was described here some time ago by the Garden Beekeeper. However, anyone who fills honey jars with a filling machine like the Hani-Mandl almost inevitably thinks about automating the labeling process as well.
2020 · October 22, 2020
Autumn is the time of year when the garden beekeeper has nothing more to do with the bees and therefore has time to fiddle about, build and invent machines, for example an optimized version of the filling robot Hani-Mandl. The first version of the filling robot works perfectly, but does not look very professional with the wooden parts.
2020 · July 06, 2020
The garden beekeeper will probably soon be able to use an external location for certain beekeeping activities, such as the formation of offshoots. Differently than in the domestic garden, where always someone has an eye on the bees, the smart wooden hives will entice potential pilferers to take them away. In order to leave no doubt at all about the ownership, the garden beekeeper had a branding stamp made, with which the boxes and the frames will be marked. In the picture you can see a homemade...
2020 · July 03, 2020
These days the garden beekeeper completed the prototype of a semi-automatic honey filling device. It is called "Hani-Mandl" ("Hani": derived from the English "honey" and pronounced with an Austrian accent, "Mandl": Austrian for "manikin"). The centerpiece is a single-board computer with OLED display and public domain software. The individual components were ordered directly in China in the proven manner. The disadvantage of the long delivery times is also an advantage: you have a lot of time to...