Bijou Smart Hive – Off-Grid Smart Beehive Concept
Bee health is difficult to track through manual inspection, and recreational beekeepers often have limited live feedback on hive conditions, which can create anxiety around colony health. This created an opportunity for a smart product that could reduce uncertainty while improving access and usability.
Bijou Smart Hive combines solar power, internal sensing, live camera monitoring, temperature control and app-based alerts to support more informed beekeeping. The product also features improved handling, easier access to frames and an integrated wasp guard.
The design was developed around rotational moulding and a plastics-led manufacturing strategy. Compared with injection moulding, rotational moulding offers lower tooling costs, making it better suited to regional manufacture and lower-volume production.
Material selection, durability, repair, remanufacture and end-of-life recovery were also key considerations throughout the design process.
The result was a premium off-grid beekeeping concept that balanced user need, manufacturability and sustainability. Despite the one-week timeframe, the project brought together product design, engineering and sustainability in a clear competition-ready proposal that became a finalist in the Design Innovation in Plastics competition, was featured by De Montfort University, and won the Sustainability Award at the DMU Made Entrepreneurship Awards.
