The main problem in the beekeeper business nowadays – as well as for the company
“Bioimkerei Mana”, which addressed us to solve their difficulties – is, that there is no suitable
software solution for their requirements obtainable. On the one hand the system has to use
the resources sparingly enough to work appropriately on a mobile pocket pc for the field
service, and on the other hand it must be able to manage the whole amount of data that is
needed to do the required statistics.
So we worked on a solution out of two components: A comprehensive server system and a
user-friendly and performance optimized PDA program.
In addition to that, a synchronization mechanism was needed, to keep the data of two
independent systems consistent.
To implement these components, a range of different development tools and technologies
like Java, SuperWaba, IBM DB2E and PostgreSQL were used. The synchronization is
handled by an XML-transfer between the server and the PDA.
Due to the great amount of data that has to be recorded in relation to the swarms’ life cycle,
our system is profitable for any beekeeper, even with few swarms. Furthermore, the system
offers various functions that make it suitable for bee-breeder.
