Swarming
A sudden drop in weight together with a shift in sound reveals a colony about to swarm — before half your bees are gone.
In-hive monitoring · Czech Republic
Know what’s wrong in the hive before you lift the lid.
BeePulse is a small sensor that sits inside the hive. No opening up, no disturbing the bees — it continuously tracks weight, temperature, humidity and sound, and tells you when a swarm is brewing, the queen is failing or the stores are running low. So you can act in time.
Why BeePulse
Between “something’s wrong”and “the beekeeper knows” lie weeks.
Honey bees pollinate a large share of what we eat. When a colony collapses, the loss isn’t only the beekeeper’s — it reaches the farmer’s field and, in the end, our table.
But a hive gets opened once every few weeks. Swarming, a failing queen and starvation announce themselves long before that — in the temperature, humidity, weight and sound of the colony. BeePulse reads those signals around the clock and shrinks the gap between “something’s happening” and “I know about it” from weeks to hours.
Hive monitoring already exists — but it’s expensive and built for industrial apiaries. BeePulse costs a fraction and focuses on one thing: telling the beekeeper, in time, that something is wrong.
What BeePulse catches
Not numbers. Answers.
A beekeeper doesn’t need another temperature chart. They need to know what’s going on inside. BeePulse watches the situations that decide whether a colony survives — and speaks up before you’d see them with your own eyes.
A failing queen
When the colony stops holding its temperature and humidity and its voice climbs into higher notes, it’s likely losing its queen. You’ll know before the next inspection.
Starvation
A slow, steady weight loss with no honey flow means the stores are running out. The warning comes while there’s still time to feed.
Mold risk
Persistently high humidity is fertile ground for mold and brood disease. BeePulse catches it before it takes hold.
A full super
Rising weight during a flow tells you when the super is full and it’s time to harvest.
How it knows
Four signals. One picture.
Version 1.0 measures four quantities. Each says something on its own — only together do they stand behind every warning above.
Weight
Hive mass over time shows honey flow, swarming, starvation and theft. The single most telling number a hive gives.
Temperature
A healthy colony holds its brood at a precise temperature. A deviation is often the first sign that something’s off.
Humidity
Too damp invites mold and disease; too dry threatens the brood. Health lives in the narrow band between.
Sound
A colony has a voice — and it changes before the change is visible. It betrays a pre-swarm mood and the loss of a queen.
How it works
From the hive to a clear answer.
- 1
Sensor in the hive
A battery-powered device quietly measures and sends its data encrypted over the network. It lasts months on a charge and never bothers the bees.
- 2
Analysis
A server stores the data and looks for anomalies — comparing the hive with its own history and with neighbouring hives. What’s normal for one hive is an alarm for another.
- 3
The alert
When something’s off, you get a notification and a clear app shows you why. No raw numbers — a sentence you can act on.
Price
A fraction of the competition.
The version 1.0 prototype is built from off-the-shelf parts — its bill of materials comes to 850 CZK. There’s no fixed price yet; the goal is to keep the cost as low as possible, and a custom board with volume production will push it lower still. We want monitoring within reach of the hobby beekeeper, not just the industrial apiary.
Comparable solutions — BeeHero, Pollenity, BeeWise, ApisProtect — cost an order of magnitude more and aim at professionals.
850 CZK v1.0 prototype materials · ≈ USD 40
Team
Who’s behind it.
David
Software, operations and overall direction
Tom Zima
Hardware, physics and chemistry — designs and builds the prototype
BeePulse began as a final-year SOČ project in computer science. But school isn’t the goal — the goal is a real startup that helps Czech beekeepers and protects pollinators.
Roadmap
Where we’re headed.
- End of summer 2026 A working v1.0 prototype you can hold
- By December 2026 Outreach to Czech beekeeping associations
- After the outreach Pilot installations in real hives
- Ongoing Funding from Czech and European grants
Be there from the start.
A reservation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Just tell us you’re interested — and get the benefits of the first beekeepers who backed BeePulse.
Reserve a BeePulse→