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Comment by burntrelish1273 | Hacker News Reader

Let's say the amortized cost of a GPS tracker is, conservatively/high-end with a lifetime data plan for updates every hour: $100. Let's say the cost of mean average deployment is $10. Then the break-even point for hive theft is reached if losses are well over 7.33 (bar) %. (110/1500)

If losses are high, beekeepers will deploy them. If losses are low, deploying GPS would be more of a fear-based, emotional decision than a rational one.

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The other piece of the puzzle is how meaningful the loss is; if such a theft is existentially threatening, and there's a reasonable chance of it, then it may still be deployed despite not actually saving money.

Exactly. Expected payoff is only useful if you have infinite resources. This is why most of us pay for insurance even though in the long run it's guaranteed to cost more than just self-funding any repairs or replacements.

I mean, if you are at fault in an accident where several people sustain life-changing injuries, or your home is a total loss, or whatever, then you probably did end coming out ahead with the insurance. Insurance makes the most sense for perils which would be catastrophic for you.

It's insurance against beehive theft, not accident insurance. Are your company insurance policies sold in a package?

For the beekeeper in the story, it was catastrophic, in that it wiped out his chance for retirement, he said.

It's just an example.

in the long run it's guaranteed to cost more than just self-funding any repairs or replacements

If you're talking about home insurance then this is certainly not guaranteed. The primary purpose of home insurance is not in any case to safe you money on small repairs but to protect you from a total loss, say from fire.

Which is a short-run argument that does not refute GP’s point.

Need only GPS trackers on a sample of the hives, no?

It depends on the distribution of thefts and % coverage.

If the losses are high enough, higher % of trackers would increase ROI (up to a point, depending if trackers were cheap enough). If losses are low enough or trackers very expensive, a few trackers here and there would insure against infrequent "cleaned out" thefts, e.g., serious illness healthcare insurance.

Only for that use case. From a logistics standpoint, which seems so important to the "modern beekeeper", it sounds like an easy thing to say yes to.

The question of "where are my bees?" can have a real-time answer and carries the benefit of knowing the temperature, humidity and other data available from remote sensors.

I have thought about the feasibility of an IOT beehive, maybe even with leaving/returning bees etc.

But the main issue would be the low profit of any individual hive. Save for some research projects, it wouldn't make sense economically.

Don't mobile radio signals disturb the bees? Maybe beehive trackers could use LoRa instead of 3G.

No need for lifetime data plan. You only equip some of the hives with trackers just when you're moving them to almond cultures where most thefts in the US occur.

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