People have already [patented][1] all sort of smart-beehive systems which makes it kind of legally iffy to approach the concept (though I’m not a patent lawyer). I know of a startup that attempted the same thing but for commerical beekeepers using standard langstroth hives and then almost got scared off when they discovered the patents. Then instead of doing the legal/business stuff to check if was a viable business model at all their engineers got carried away putting all sorts of Android phone wizardry into the hives instead of using their first cheap and simple solution.
[1]: http://www.google.com/patents/US6910941 “patented it”
