Honey bee season is in full force right now. Time is definitely NOT on our side. Painting bee equipment before they need it is challenging enough, but staying ahead of the bees in general is always hard. With a full time day job, and beekeeping on the weekends, who the heck has time to mow?!?!? Now I can get some time back.
With the arrival of our second Yarbo, we were finally able to take our first one to the farm and easily enable netRTK to mow with him. We successfully mowed our one acre bee yard field this weekend using netRTK. The bee yard is 19 miles away from our current home on our 20 acre farm and future home site. We have been waiting for this capability with great anticipation! Buzz LightYar did an awesome job while we tended our bees with our mentees helping. The mentees were fascinated watching him work. They said he looks like a big worker bee. We’re so busy working bees, it is a relief to have a force multiplier like our Yarbo to help me get that time back. I think our bees even like him too.
Special thanks to the help of @bryan.wheeler who can be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a homeowner. Now we are repeat offenders with the arrival of our second Yarbo (to be named soon). Thanks for all the technical and moral support!
This is actually really cool to see as I have a large Laynes hive in my back yard and I’ve wondered if the Yarbo would ever bother them. Unfortunately my swarm didn’t make it through this past winter and I haven’t had a chance to go clean out the hive and remove the old frames damaged by a pair of mice that moved in before it got warm this year. (the mice are already evicted btw ) I’m not super concerned about the mower head as it is so relatively quiet, but the string trimmer attachment has my attention in this regard. That said, when I mapped that portion of my yard, I made sure to give about 1.5-2 feet of buffer between where ol’ HAL 9000 mows and the actual stand for the hive box.
Definitely nice to hear that they didn’t go after the mower.
I have a Makita 36V electric trimmer. I use it around the hives and they are okay with it. Our bees are pretty chill. So much so that one of my mentors asked if the smoke we were using is legal in the state of VA.
Once the apiary is reconstructed over the next year or so, each hive stand of 5-6 hives will be in a 12’x3’ brick or timber bordered bed with a corrugated roofing panel underneath with pea gravel on top of it. I’ll be using Foxhound bee stands with double 2x6’s front and back. This way, Yarbo can do a bunch of dead-ends in the X and Y direction with the mower and the trimmer down all the aisles. It’ll be a project that we’ll really appreciate when it’s done for labor reasons and small hive beetle prevention.
Study Design: Researchers placed static neodymium magnetic discs (PureWaveCell™ style, with 12 N38-grade magnets in a “Flower of Life” radial pattern, ~0.4 T flux density) directly beneath the floors of commercial honeybee hives. One yard had treated hives (30 hives, 90 boxes), and a second served as control (26 hives, 65 boxes). Monitoring ran from September 2023 to August 2024. Later, magnets were added to the control yard for a crossover check.
Benefits Observed (statistically significant, p < 0.001 for key metrics):
Higher overwinter survival.
Stronger spring populations.
Better hive hygiene.
Fewer queen replacements.
Roughly ~40% rise in honey yield, mainly from improved survival rates rather than per-hive productivity.
After adding discs to the control yard, performance improved within ~8 weeks, matching the treated group.
It’s really great to see that netRTK has been working so well for you and that you’re now able to use Yarbo at your bee yard with such success. Saving time is exactly what Yarbo is designed for, and it’s wonderful to hear that Buzz LightYar is helping you spend more time focusing on your bees instead of mowing.
Thank you for sharing your experience and photos with the community. Wishing you, your mentees, and of course your bees a fantastic season ahead. We can’t wait to hear what name you choose for your second Yarbo!
Now we are repeat offenders with the arrival of our second Yarbo (to be named soon). Thanks for all the technical and moral support!
) I’m not super concerned about the mower head as it is so relatively quiet, but the string trimmer attachment has my attention in this regard. That said, when I mapped that portion of my yard, I made sure to give about 1.5-2 feet of buffer between where ol’ HAL 9000 mows and the actual stand for the hive box.
