Korea's farm agency builds a beehive-lifting robot that doubles colonies per keeper

South Korea's Rural Development Administration (RDA) said in a press release on Oct 18 that it has developed a robotic carrier that lifts and moves beehives, one of the heaviest repetitive jobs in Korean beekeeping. The agency says the device lets one person look after 300 bee colonies instead of 150 and halves the cost of hired labour.

The problem is weight and age. During the honey flow a hive with its upper box reaches 40 kg, and more than 70% of Korean beekeepers are over 60, the RDA said, which turns hive moving into a source of back and shoulder injuries.

How the machine works

The carrier combines a four-wheel base, in which each wheel steers independently, with an electric lift and a two-jaw gripper. A beekeeper drives it from a smartphone app to the front of a hive; the gripper holds the hive under its step so it does not tilt, lifts it and carries it to a new spot. The wheels can turn in parallel for a sideways crab walk and spin the body on the spot, so the machine fits apiary aisles 2 m wide and climbs 10-degree slopes. The base measures 650 by 927 by 337 mm and runs 12 hours on a 24 V lithium-ion battery, according to the agency's technical annex.

The core design came from Kangwon National University. The RDA worked with an autonomous robot platform company, which it did not name, to turn the prototype into a model farms can buy.

What the field tests measured

In June trials at farms in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi province, and Gimje, North Jeolla, and at the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences test apiary, moving one hive took 4 minutes 47 seconds on average (286.8 seconds, standard deviation 69 seconds). About 79% of that time went into driving and aligning the machine, and returning to position alone took about 60%. With practice, alignment time fell from 274 to 76 seconds, a 72% cut, which the agency expects to speed up work as farmers get used to the app.

The economics, and a gap in them

The RDA prices the device at KRW 40 million and says a farm can expect about KRW 5 million more income a year, with payback in about three and a half years. MEKAWIRE's arithmetic shows the two figures do not reconcile on their own: KRW 40 million divided by KRW 5 million a year is eight years. The shorter payback must rest on labour savings the release does not itemise.

From remote control to physical AI

The next step is autonomy. With Professor Han Woong-chul's team at Seoul National University, the RDA plans to add camera-based recognition of hive position and angle so the machine approaches and docks on its own, which would attack the 79% of time now spent driving and aligning. The agency will measure lumbar load and posture, hold a farm evaluation in early November and propose the device as a new-technology pilot project in 2028.

In MEKAWIRE's coverage, the RDA's new-technology route is the one that gave Daedong's HX1400-AI tractor priority in public purchasing and subsidies in September, and Daedong is co-developing the AGROID greenhouse humanoid with Rainbow Robotics for 2028.