Greetings from Tanzania ,
Lake zone Tanzania Beekeeping field school
I am a founder of none for profit organization based in North-western Tanzania. Currently am designing a solution for my local beekeepers to address challenges on bee colonies leaving hives, not entering hives, low honey production, and start producing others bee products others than common honey. And making all these solutions in one center where beekeepers can come together and learn. Whoever knows how a good beekeeping learning center can be established, Any senior volunteer to participate in that journey, Any connection to organizations or individuals with interests on beekeeping industry.
I invite you all for the knowledge support and other resources.
3 April 2025 11:08am
Perhaps reach out to HiveTracks, they have developed a mobile app for monitoring hive health as well as collecting floral data around hives!
HiveTracks - Beekeeping App & Bee Data Solutions
We empower beekeepers worldwide to increase bee health and biodiversity locally and crowd-source environmental intelligence for a positive data-driven impact. An app for hobbyists, professional beekeepers, and hive management companies that increases productivity and bee health through intelligence generated by the community of all HiveTracks beekeepers. From scheduling tasks to digital inspection records - beekeeping has never been easier.
Frank van der Most
RubberBootsData
4 April 2025 10:55am
When it comes to funding, have you checked out the resources listed in the Funding and Finance group's about page?
Just some personal reflections. Use them - or not - as you see fit:
• Since you're starting, I would suggest to start with small applications. Most sponsors who supply bigger grants will ask for a kind of 'track record'.
• It's just me, but beekeeping not only fulfills an important role in nature, but obviously also provides a sell-able product. So, perhaps you don't even need grants, but could consider asking for (small) loans.
• Trying to find other marketable bee products ( what would that be? Wax? ) sounds like a good idea to me. Perhaps you can make that into something truly innovative in Tanzanian beekeeping.
• Solving, or even doing research into the problem of colonies leaving hives, might be an avenue of funding if you manage to involve university or public research institute based scientists who are interested in this problem too. Perhaps you find them here on WildLabs.
4 April 2025 12:47pm
I suggest you contact STEP who have been working on Human-Elephant Coexistence by introducing beehive fence around crop lands. In an earlier project that I've been involved in they have engaged trainers to support bee-keeping cooperatives that faced the exact issues you mentioned. Shoot me a message and I can get you in touch. Good luck with your endeavour, it seems like much needed initiative to support the industry in TZ.
8 April 2025 9:17am
Hi, I'm really interested in your project. If you're open to it, I’d be happy to build and send you a couple of data logger units — free of charge — to help monitor temperature, humidity, pressure, and possibly hive weight using a load cell. I’m also considering adding a simple bee traffic sensor to track how often bees enter and leave the hive. This could help reveal patterns related to foraging behavior or colony stress.
It would also be an interesting use case for using LoRaWAN to send node data to a central gateway. The data could be exported in line protocol format so you can easily import it into InfluxDB or another dashboarding tool if you'd like to visualize it.
I’m quite busy with other projects, but I’d be happy to throw something together to get you started, and I’ll include the source code in case you'd like to modify or expand it in the future. Let me know if this sounds helpful — I'd love to support your work.
Best regards, Travis
Carly Batist