Design and Development of a Smart Incubator for Bee Queens Based on IoT Technology

Successful queen bee incubation requires stringent environmental regulation to ensure consistent and reliable developmental outcomes. This paper presents the design and development of a novel smart queen bee incubator to maintain optimal environmental conditions throughout the incubation. The system provides fine-grained, gradual control of temperature and humidity across a wide operational range, and a controlled air ventilation system, thereby improving larval viability and developmental stability. Finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) tools are used to simulate and study the heat distribution and airflow of the proposed incubator, where the FEA studies identify the parameters and locations of the actuators. The FEA and CFD results show the thermal distribution achieved with respect to the requirement operations of bee incubation. A control unit governs all sensing and actuation processes, enabling high-precision maintenance of environmental parameters. Additionally, Internet of Things (IoT) technology is integrated, so the beekeepers can monitor and control the proposed incubator through a mobile application and Wi-Fi connectivity. The IoT system enables the beekeepers to stream and access the collected data, which enhances apiculture and queen bee rearing process. The proposed incubator is tested using queen cells, the experimental results shows that the smart electromechanical system successfully maintains the temperature and humidity within error of <1%, where the actuators operate at 56.5 % of the system operation. The experimental test and verification demonstrate larval survival and the effectiveness in maintaining a controlled incubation environment.