Relay

Hivewire Relay — Hop the Mesh Over Anything

When the yard is over the ridge, behind the treeline, or just plain far — the Relay carries your data the rest of the way.

Hivewire's LoRa mesh radio reaches up to about 3 miles in open line of sight, farther with a raised antenna — but bee yards don't always cooperate: hills, hollows, barns, and forest all eat radio signal. The Relay is the fix. Mounted on a fence post, pole, or high ground between your yard and your Gateway, it listens for mesh traffic and re-broadcasts it — adding a fresh, full-strength hop wherever you need one. Readings arrive with acknowledgment and retry at every hop, so nothing gets lost along the way. Housed in an IP65 weatherproof enclosure and happy on solar power, it needs no internet, no WiFi, no cellular — just a sightline in each direction.

Works with a Hivewire Gateway and a Hivewire plan — you choose your plan when you activate your gateway.

How it fits

Sensors → Hub → Relay → Gateway → Cloud. The Relay sits mid-path on the mesh. It doesn't need to hear your hives and it doesn't need a connection to the internet — it only needs to hear the mesh on one side and be heard on the other. Chain more than one to reach truly remote yards.

Two ways to run one

• Dedicated Relay — a Hivewire Hub set to the Relay role: a pure repeater with nothing else to do. The most affordable way to add a hop.
• Relay + Hub in one — got a few hives at the halfway point? The same device can scan those hives over Bluetooth and repeat its neighbors' traffic at the same time. One box, two jobs.

And because relay duty is a software role, not a separate product, any Hivewire Hub or Gateway can be switched into (or out of) the Relay role from its setup screen — no reflashing, no ladder trips. Buy it as a Relay today; promote it to a full yard hub next season. (A box running a gateway role doesn't relay — it's the end of the line, where the mesh meets the internet. Switch it to Hub or Relay and it does.)

Built for the middle of nowhere

• No internet required — the Relay is radio-to-radio. Its site needs power and a sightline, nothing else.
• Acknowledged hops — relayed packets keep the mesh's delivery guarantees: acknowledgment, automatic retry, and duplicate filtering, at every hop.
• Loop-proof mesh — hop limits and deduplication are built into the mesh protocol, so adding relays never floods your airwaves.
• Self-reporting — the Relay sends its own vitals (signal, battery, solar, uptime) through the mesh, so a struggling repeater shows up on your dashboard before it becomes a silent yard.
• Set-and-forget updates — firmware updates arrive over the air; setup and diagnostics happen from your phone over the Relay's own WiFi hotspot.

Power options

Grid — USB power. If the site has an outlet, that's all you need.

Standard Solar Kit — a 10 W / 6 V solar panel paired with a 15,000 mAh LiPo battery. Sized for typical sites: the panel tops the battery off by day, the battery carries the Relay through nights and cloudy stretches.

Solar Heavy Kit — built to power a Relay plus a Tempest weather station at a remote site: a 25 W / 12 V solar panel, a Victron 75/10 MPPT charge controller, and a 7 Ah LiFePO4 battery designed for years of deep cycling. It’s also the right pick for shaded sites and northern winters. Bonus: the Relay reads the Victron controller wirelessly, so panel wattage, battery voltage, and charge state show up right on your Hivewire dashboard — you’ll know your power system is healthy without driving out to check.

Specs

In the box

• 1× Hivewire Relay in IP65 weatherproof enclosure
• Antenna(s)
• USB power cable
• Quick-start guide
• Solar kits: panel, battery, charge controller (Heavy kit), mounting hardware, and wiring

Requires a Hivewire account and a Hivewire Gateway somewhere on the mesh to reach the cloud. Works with all Hivewire Hubs, Gateways, and sensors.