Researcher & Hobby Beekeeper

Our colleague Bernhard Schenkenfelder is not only active as a researcher and senior software engineer at SCCH but also a passionate urban beekeeper.

He assisted his father, who was also a beekeeper, in his childhood. Recently, he took over his father's beehives and placed them in his house in the middle of the old town of Freistadt. Here, the bees benefit from the diversity of the surrounding parks where no pesticides are used, and monocultures are absent.

The proximity of the beehives to his home allows Bernhard to care for his beekeeping optimally. He produces approximately 30 kg of honey annually, which he enjoys sharing with family and friends.

His children are also enthusiastic about the world of beekeeping and have already brought their school class or kindergarten group home to craft wooden frames for the beehive, participate in honey extraction, and, above all, taste the fresh honey.

"It's also interesting how efficiently the bees work: a comb made of 40g of beeswax can hold 2 kg of honey," says Bernhard Schenkenfelder.

At SCCH, Bernhard is conducting research on the topic of "Low-Code." This refers to a more natural way of software development for users, using visual programming or natural language instead of textual programming languages.

Bee project at SCCH

At SCCH, research is conducted in collaboration with bMaja GmbH on how to protect bees from the Varroa mite. The developed assistance system helps to easily detect mite infestations and intervene in a timely manner. The "IoT at the Beehive" project was supported under the easy2innovate funding program. Concrete "Queensaver" (https://www.queensaver.com) devices for AI-assisted colony monitoring have already been developed as a result.