For our final project, we were encouraged to discover new ways to address the wicked problem of colony collapse through various avenues. The "Ideal Bee" project was a theoretical solution, while this project was supposed to be a more realistic and attainable solution. We began in the ideation phase, coming up with as many ideas as possible. Our group finally decided on the idea to build an indoor beehive. Our goal was to create a hive to educate people, make bee keeping more accessible, and encourage more people to be invested in the lives of bees.
In our research, we discovered some indoor hives that already exist and tried to improve upon those designs. Unlike other indoor hives, ours was meant to be unobtrusive to the home, and pleasing to the eye.
The prototype process was new to everyone in our group. Being engineers, we were comfortable in the design space, but it was exciting and new to see our design come to life! There were some issues with the CNC router, so we resorted to 3D printed. We also ran into issues with the scaling and assembly. But all in all, I was very impressed with the results! And I was very excited to learn how to laser cut.
I was involved mostly in the research end of our project. I had no idea how many variables are necessary to consider when designing a hive! And putting the hive inside added it's own difficulties. If the hive were actually manufactured, more safety measures would need to be made, such as the safety latch on the tube and securing the the bars on the top of the hive. It also learned a lot about the process of installing packaged bees. It is a daunting task if you have never kept bees before, and I believe that is another area of our hive that could be improved.
In our research, we discovered some indoor hives that already exist and tried to improve upon those designs. Unlike other indoor hives, ours was meant to be unobtrusive to the home, and pleasing to the eye.
The prototype process was new to everyone in our group. Being engineers, we were comfortable in the design space, but it was exciting and new to see our design come to life! There were some issues with the CNC router, so we resorted to 3D printed. We also ran into issues with the scaling and assembly. But all in all, I was very impressed with the results! And I was very excited to learn how to laser cut.
I was involved mostly in the research end of our project. I had no idea how many variables are necessary to consider when designing a hive! And putting the hive inside added it's own difficulties. If the hive were actually manufactured, more safety measures would need to be made, such as the safety latch on the tube and securing the the bars on the top of the hive. It also learned a lot about the process of installing packaged bees. It is a daunting task if you have never kept bees before, and I believe that is another area of our hive that could be improved.
user_manual.pdf |