# Hive Theft Detection



## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

There are devices out there;
Battery life 6 months to a year
GPS locator with a monthly fee
Movement alert and or restricted area alert
Low batter alert

These units runs for 35 to 100 and around 10 to 20 a month. This monitors one hive at a time.

If you were to make a mother unit that monitors many at a time, might have some commercial interest, would need to be able to track there signal over some distance commercial hives might be spread out. Not sure if a wifi mother unit could track very far. With that many units you might have a malfunctions, battery replacements or a loss of signal of one now and again... which would make for a lot of alerts and emergency trips to the apiary.


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## Bee Certain (Jan 1, 2016)

Good points. Thanks.

The RF ID unit would be completely sealed (and hidden) inside the top bar of a frame and have a battery life of 3 years. There would be one System Recorder for every hive within a 600' radius. The System Recorder would not be hidden (unfortunately), but it would be "Tamper Resistant" and "Tamper Indicating". The System Recorder would solar powered and communicate via cellphone. Moving a hive, tampering with the System Recorder or blocking any of the signals could cause an alarm. There is a trade-off between [sensitivity/type of alarm] and the number of false alarms. Details to follow.

Most of what I have described is already implemented. I use WiFi now, but cellphone will be ready within a month for another customer.

GPS is one-way communication, from satellites in orbit to a receiver on the ground. Any technology that reports location is doing so via some other communication channel such as cellphone. I think that GPS draws too much power to be placed inside individual hive frames and I'm not sure it would be all that useful in the System Recorder (unless we can convince the thieves to take the System Recorder with them). That said, I'm open to suggestions.

Theft of hives is a low blow that really ticks me off. I'm ready to work with anyone that's interested to make this happen. I see this as a "community driven design" were you all are the community.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

I'm only a small time player with 30-40 hives. I don't think I'm a target for thieves as I'm too small and my hives are not palletized in a commercial manner that could be quickly loaded up and hauled off. If I was though I'd want a dummy hive/pallet Trojan horse with something like "Lojack" in it. There are going to be dead outs in any large operation and thieves are not normally going to move a dead hive off of a pallet to move a live one on there. Have a sealed kit that fits into a deep that's got a serious battery, spooky good GPS tracking/reporting and is sensitive to forklift movement. 

The commercial guy buys the kit. Installs it in a deep that looks like all the others. Puts a deep on the top with drawn comb in it. If it was a 4-5 frame brick that's got ears like a frame to hang in a Deep even better. An active hive could still be in there to further hide the poison pill". The beekeeper might want to put advertising that the hives have tracker(s) in them, or not. What's this worth? No idea but losing 240 hives at $200 per and you're at $48,000 not including the lost pollination income ($100 per) $24,000 for almonds alone. The math is simplified for example purposes and does not take into account multiple pollination destinations or any honey harvest.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

The larger thefts reported in California have been from marshalling yards (drops) before and after the almonds. A master/slave system of a single broadcast unit monitoring RFID tags within frames would work to protect those aggregations. What is the detection distance of the RF tags? Could a "brand inspector" deputy detect these in scattered pallets from public roadways.

I heard apocryphal stories of thieves pulling pallets just behind the owners during the scatter. Thieves were hidden by dense tule fog and took advantage of the open gates and row chains during the scatter. 

A truckload-scale theft ring requires confederates and organization. The Weedpatch bust in 2014 had a full "chop shop" for repainting boxes. These are not casual thefts, but bent beekeepers who must pull the same stunt year after year. The universe of pollinating outfits is small enough I would guess some investigative pressure would shake the bad nuts out of the tree. The Weedpatch bust used bright high-vis orange as the repaint color --- were additional loads in that distinct color scheme detected ? Seems like the chop-shop was a continuing operation.

I argued before for a passive RFID chip branded onto boxes, tracked by a beekeepers database. The RFID could be read at the border inspection stations using a chip scanner. The issue in California is the bee inspector system has been completely dismantled and there is no in-state oversight except private pre-almond evaluations. The proposed RF units could be read in the same manner -- so each border crossing would be a secondary detection opportunity.

I agree with DCoates that building a module that fits a double frame plastic feeder and could be dropped into a "trogan" hive would increase protection to a whole yard. Even if the criminal stopped at some roadside and dug through all the boxes looking for the sender unit, his location would still be beeped and his risk of detection would rise astronomically.

Stolen hives are fenced to almond farmers looking for a good deal -- my guess is some of those farmers have a pretty good idea they have "hot" hives -- and some are likely to repeat the buy year-after-year. Profiling the bent farmers would disrupt the market, and more thieves would make stupid mistakes. The Weedpatch bust happened when the thieves inadvertently tried to fence the hives back to the owners.

Some beeks are a hardscrabble lot -- and a lot of hive dealing and trading goes on. My guess is some beeks know they do some dodgy deals with potentially hot stock. If they risked having the whole load stalled at the inspection port because a box read hot -- the value of trading fenced boxes would drop and the demand side of the theft game would fall.

There are several theft accounts where the thief emptied the colony frames into his own boxes onsite. The skill and knowledge to do that is not broadly known. Those thefts are not an underemployed citrus box loader with access to a skidsteer and bobtail over the weekend. 

The engineering to make sure a GPS signal antenna was readable inside a hive stack is required. The LoJack system uses cell-phone tower triangulation for that reason. The Spot system uses a GPS satellite - OnStar link, but battery life is compromised by antenna obstruction.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

To thwart LoJack and OnStar thieves steal a car and drive it to a "cool off" location like a airport parking lot with high visibility. They let it sit for a week or so, coming back the next day to watch from afar. With LoJack and OnStar the authorities will normally pick up the car as soon as they locate it. If I remember correctly the LoJack activation signal is good for 3 days before it runs out of battery? Someone will know more than me about this. If the cops haven't gotten it back within a week or so the car is considered "clean". It's then picked up for processing. 

Letting stolen bee's in that volume "cool" will be much harder for bee rustlers. Their cargo is live and will need to be offloaded ASAP to keep it's value high.


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## Honey-4-All (Dec 19, 2008)

Received a text today that another 200 hives were snagged. This time from Roger Sprague's operation.


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## Bee Certain (Jan 1, 2016)

LoJack/OnStar are close, but don't quite fit the need, in my opinion. First of all, too expensive, second, not precise enough. I have 90% of the technology in place to build the following system:
1. "Salt" a few hives with drop-in feeders that are feeders on the top with bottom quarter for electronics (i.e. false bottom).
2. Motion sensing sends alarm when hive is first moved.
3. Central facility receives alarm along with tracking coordinates and executes owner defined call-out list (notify sheriff, etc.)
4. Owner/trusted employee uses hand-held unit with encrypted link to enable/disable alarm.
5. Law enforcement can detect hives with salted units if they have a $100 detector unit.
6. If employees working in remote locations are a concern, then we can add panic buttons to the system.
7. Stand-alone operation is a possibility with the addition of a separate rf-linked unit with a contact closure.

Even if the bad guys know the alarm system is in place, they can not defeat it without sending an initial alarm. The best they can do is disable the tracking feature after searching all the hives. Time is on our side.

Basic system: Salting the first two hives should cost about $300. Additional salted hives would cost about $70/hive. Not sure about monthly monitoring fees, perhaps $50/month/yard? Prices may change as I refine the design.

Above uses cellphone technology, using satellite will add another $100 to the cost of the first two hives.

All I need is a strong expression of interest to proceed. (A few paying customers would be nice too).

Bob


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

Again I'm not your customer but your idea is intriguing for what I would think a commercial beekeeper would be concerned with. What's the battery life? What's the expected lifespan of the unit? What's the annual cost per salted hive, at what volumes? These are all questions commercial guys are going to need to know in their decision making process. 

It takes money (and time) to make money. If I was in your shoes I'd get in contact with 1-2 big commercial guys and produce 5-10 of the units. For free, test them in those yards the commercial guys tell you are the most prone to theft. Work the bugs out (pardon the pun). After a year or two of refining the product and getting experience under your belt, (assuming all goes well) use testimonials from those guys to support the introduction of the product.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Bee Certain said:


> Even if the bad guys know the alarm system is in place, they can not defeat it without sending an initial alarm.


Not quite.

All the bad guys need to do is jam the cell phone frequencies before disturbing the hive area. While such jammers are illegal to use in most circumstances, they are available. See this story about a guy in Florida using a jammer for over a year, just to mess with commuters:

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/a-florida-resident-drove-around-with-a-cellphone-jammer-84369099229.html


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Here's an idea. Perhaps the Republic of California could use some of the millions they collect each year from the 7% tax on pollination to strategically place as many traffic cameras as may be needed to identify what vehicles are traveling on many of the prime pollination arteries and when. Nothing like a sudden flash in the darkness to send some of these rats scurrying for cover.


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## Bee Certain (Jan 1, 2016)

Good point about the jamming. I know that any system can be defeated by a smart enough and determined enough threat. I should have made that clear. The first defense against jamming is to periodically send non-repeating, encrypted "I'm OK" messages to the destination. The absence of a unique message indicates a problem. I'm sure that the NSA has ways to break the code, but then I doubt that they are in the beekeeping business. Although, you just never know ...


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Honey-4-All said:


> Received a text today that another 200 hives were snagged. This time from Roger Sprague's operation.


I reported the Sprague theft in this thread.
http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...Apiaries-report-250-hives-stolen-Yuba-City-Ca

There are some huge similarities in the Colusa theft and the Sprague theft (Yuba City). Further reporting on the Colusa theft places the target yards on the east side of the river (or near Yuba City). That indicates about 500 hives have been lifted with an operator using a Hummerbee loader from the same general area. In both thefts, multiple yards were targeted -- the theft ring knew the location of at least four local yards.

This is not someone pulling off the freeway and throwing some pallets on an empty truck --- the yards were off the main artery in the Colusa case. Someone with *local* knowledge and a full beekeeping kit (loader, multiple trucks, loader trailer) is conducting these operations.


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## Bee Certain (Jan 1, 2016)

D Coates said:


> What's the battery life? What's the expected lifespan of the unit? What's the annual cost per salted hive, at what volumes?
> 
> It takes money (and time) to make money. If I was in your shoes I'd get in contact with 1-2 big commercial guys and produce 5-10 of the units. For free, test them in those yards the commercial guys tell you are the most prone to theft. Work the bugs out (pardon the pun). After a year or two of refining the product and getting experience under your belt, (assuming all goes well) use testimonials from those guys to support the introduction of the product.


Battery life of the Hive Motion Sensor is 3+ years. I ship temperature and humidity monitors with the batteries installed and transmitting. No need for an on/off switch. Motion is even easier. The units are so small they could be embedded in frame top bars.

Battery life of the unit that sends cellphone or satellite data can also be three years, but we are now talking about a larger battery. Still hidden in the bottom of a drop-in feeder.

I'm looking for a commercial beekeeper.


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