# BeeCam 2018 is Live!!!!



## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

The music is ok but I love the sound of the buzzing bees it relaxes me.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Dan the bee guy said:


> The music is ok but I love the sound of the buzzing bees it relaxes me.


Unfortunately the camera I'm using doesn't have a mic, so I can't provide you with buzzing. I'm also using some software (ffmpeg) to send the camera feed to YouTube, and it requires an audio stream, so I picked my favorite relaxing soundtrack.


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## gruntworker (May 20, 2013)

IAmTheWaterbug said:


> Unfortunately the camera I'm using doesn't have a mic, so I can't provide you with buzzing. I'm also using some software (ffmpeg) to send the camera feed to YouTube, and it requires an audio stream, so I picked my favorite relaxing soundtrack.


They just pulled a rubber band out. Laying on the door step now


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

gruntworker said:


> They just pulled a rubber band out. Laying on the door step now


Hah! There was a different piece on the doorstep an hour ago. They must have moved onto a new frame.

I also just switched the view to Colony 1, to the right of the camera. I think I need to take off that anti-robbing screen.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

And out comes another rubber band!

The girls are busy today!


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

yellow, orange, and off-white pollen. many flowers must be in bloom there. very nice!


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## DeepCreek (Jan 23, 2015)

IAmTheWaterbug said:


> My new BeeCam is mounted and streaming!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Can you share your setup? I'd like to set up something similar for my use only.


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## Tim KS (May 9, 2014)

I enjoyed your live feed last year while it was up. 

The feed today is dated 1-22-18, but it's the 23rd.......I'll try later to see if goes to live feed. Ha, I remember the girls dragging rubber bands out last year too. Ugh, all that work just to clean house.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Tim KS said:


> I enjoyed your live feed last year while it was up.
> 
> The feed today is dated 1-22-18, but it's the 23rd.......I'll try later to see if goes to live feed. Ha, I remember the girls dragging rubber bands out last year too. Ugh, all that work just to clean house.


Lots more rubber bands coming out this morning!

Yeah, sorry about the intermittency. The camera works fine, but I'm using a Raspberry Pi to grab its video stream and push it to my YouTube streaming channel, and I'm having issues with that. I need to restart it every now and then.

But the rubber bands are a great sign! This was a cutout that I given in a cardboard box, upside-down, in late November. Yeah, not the greatest time to transplant a hive. But it's Los Angeles, so the weather was fine. Anyway, I used about two dozen rubber bands to strap all the cutout comb into 8 frames. A handful of rubber bands came out immediately as the bees settled into and onto the center 3-4 frames, but most of the rubber bands were still there 2 weeks ago, because the bees hadn't worked the outer frames yet.

The steady stream of rubber bands must mean that they're actively working those outer frames now. I'll go in and take a look on Saturday.


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## Fivej (Apr 4, 2016)

This should come with the warning "May Be Habit Forming". Very cool set up. J


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## suburbanrancher (Aug 5, 2011)

This is fantastic as all the other bee cams I like to visit are down. Thanks for doing this!


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

DeepCreek said:


> Can you share your setup? I'd like to set up something similar for my use only.


3 major components to my setup:

The camera
I splurged with some Christmas money and bought a $220 weatherproof camera with pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) functionality, power-over-Ethernet (POE), and some built-in storage. 
You can certainly spend a lot less for a camera, but I really wanted the PTZ and focus because it's hard to get the scene right without those features.
The 5 megapixels are totally wasted on a YouTube stream, since the most most people will ever view it at is 1920 x 1080.
I built my own camera last year, from a Raspberry Pi, but that ended up being more trouble than it was worth. But it wasn't a total waste (see below).

The mounting solution
If Reolink had provided a pole mount, it would have been ready, out of the box.
As it is, the camera is weatherproof only if it's mounted against a wall, with the cables running into the wall. 
I had to buy a box, stuff the cabling inside the box, install a weatherproof cable egress, and make my own u-bolts to mount it. See here for all the details on that.

The software
If you just want to view this yourself, you don't need anything more than the camera and a web browser. The camera can be viewed on a web page when you're home, or on the free apps on a phone or computer if you're outside your house.
If you want to publish the video on YouTube for the masses, you'll need some sort of video broadcasting software. I used the same Raspberry Pi computer I used for the camera last year, and turned it into an ffmpeg relay streamer, where I push the video out to YouTube, who broadcasts it to the rest of the world.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Here's a better link to the live stream.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Lotta bee traffic right now!


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Here's some recorded footage from yesterday. What the heck is going on with this bee in the middle of the screen?










[video]https://youtu.be/-04D0BRSy1Q?t=1h14m35s[/video]

She stumbles out of the hive, looking like she's trying to groom something nasty off of herself. During the next few minutes her sisters come and help her.

I hope it's not a mite.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Similar thing happening here. Does this look like she's trying to get rid of a mite attached to her underside?

[video]https://youtu.be/du4AvuiC7DI?t=56m1s[/video]


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

And here comes another rubber band…&#55357;&#56397;


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## Fivej (Apr 4, 2016)

Very cool. They sure take care of their hive, don't they?


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## ThisGuy (Jan 13, 2014)

So many rubber bands! There's 2 more!


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## Tim KS (May 9, 2014)

Maybe those two are trying to clear a stinger retractor malfunction.  :scratch:


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

ThisGuy said:


> So many rubber bands! There's 2 more!


This was a cutout, so there's lots of rubber bands still in the hive. Probably still 5-6 more to go.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

And Happy So Cal Pollen Day, to all of my local beekeepers!


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

Can you put current temps on your bee cam it would be nice for us northern beeks. 13 F this morning and that's a mild morning temp.


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## Tim KS (May 9, 2014)

Dan the bee guy said:


> Can you put current temps on your bee cam it would be nice for us northern beeks. 13 F this morning and that's a mild morning temp.


I thought the same thing.. A digital thermometer in the picture would be nice. :lookout:


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

I can't do it with the current setup, because the camera doesn't have firmware that I can fiddle with, and the streaming server that relays the video YouTube is a $35 Raspberry Pi without enough horsepower to decode, overlay, and re-encode in realtime. 

I'll be putting up another camera to search my swarm trap next week, and that will have a text overlay feature in it. I'll have to see if I can dynamically put the temperature in there. Great idea!

The best I can do for now is a link to my present weather forecast in the video description.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Here's a time lapse of a day in the life:






There's some serious rubber-band removal starting around 12:45!


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

Tuned in at 4 minutes the first thing I noticed was the fanning bees, it's a little warm today. Only in the teens by me. Two months to go before I'll have some weather like that.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Yup! 78 degrees today. 

But we're also seeing a new drought in So California, so tomorrow I'll look and see if they have any food.


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

Ug drought in California or winter in Wisconsin burn or freeze = fun with the weather


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

IAmTheWaterbug said:


> Here's a better link to the live stream.


I now have 2 cameras up. The second one is here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIVY11504PcY2sy2qpRhiMg/live

in front of my swarm trap. I was planning on catching a move-in event, but the bees got ahead of me and moved in literally just before I put up the camera. I saw scouts yesterday afternoon, so made plans to get the camera repaired and mounted this morning, and by the time I got down there, they were in.

But I'll keep the camera there after I move the hive to the bee yard and reset the trap. I'm still hoping to catch a move-in.

This is the resurrection of the hardware from last year's BeeCam, e.g. built from a Raspberry Pi computer modules with the camera unit. The image quality is lacking, so I'm thinking of buying another security camera (with zoom and auto-focus) and putting it here on a tripod, instead of this contraption:


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## Richinbama (Jan 15, 2018)

Pretty kewl waterbug. I'm going to watch your videos shortly


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## Richinbama (Jan 15, 2018)

Darn, all I got was music.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

That's because it was dark. Try again during daylight hours (Los Angeles time).


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## Tim KS (May 9, 2014)

waterbug, you're thinking too technical for a temp reading. I was thinking something something like this... https://www.zoro.com/taylor-digital-pocket-thermometer-lcd-5-l-9840/i/G1572365/ .


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Tim KS said:


> waterbug, you're thinking too technical for a temp reading. I was thinking something something like this... https://www.zoro.com/taylor-digital-pocket-thermometer-lcd-5-l-9840/i/G1572365/ .


LOL! Yes! That's the same conclusion I came to. I actually have a digital thermometer in front of the "main" BeeCam right now, but it's unreadable because of the glare. I need to reposition it:


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## Tim KS (May 9, 2014)

:thumbsup:


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

IAmTheWaterbug said:


> LOL! Yes! That's the same conclusion I came to. I actually have a digital thermometer in front of the "main" BeeCam right now, but it's unreadable because of the glare. I need to reposition it:


I appear to have fixed the glare problem by re-positioning and putting some tape on the back side.

I now have a shadow problem. 

But at least I can see that it's about 75 degrees right now:


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

I became so envious of your bee cam that I removed my security camera and placed it in front of my hives.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Kuro said:


> I became so envious of your bee cam that I removed my security camera and placed it in front of my hives.


:lpf:

Where's the YouTube feed?


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

It's in our home security system, so only me and the security company can watch.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

. . . and out comes another rubber band. I didn't get a chance to inspect this weekend, but maybe they're moving to another frame.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

IAmTheWaterbug said:


>


The thermometer is reading 87 right now, which is grossly incorrect. Current forecast says it's about 71 now, trending up to 79 in the early afternoon, which feels about right. So the sun shining on the thermometer is throwing things off.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

IAmTheWaterbug said:


> I can't do it with the current setup, because the camera doesn't have firmware that I can fiddle with, and the streaming server that relays the video YouTube is a $35 Raspberry Pi without enough horsepower to decode, overlay, and re-encode in realtime.
> 
> I'll be putting up another camera to search my swarm trap next week, and that will have a text overlay feature in it. I'll have to see if I can dynamically put the temperature in there. Great idea!


Ok! I now have the Swarm Trap Cam up, with the present temperature overlaid on the video:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIVY11504PcY2sy2qpRhiMg/live[/video]










Please note that I don't have a thermometer feeding the camera; it's just taking the feed from OpenWeatherMap.org for my city and assuming it's correct. The temperature gets updated every 10 minutes.

On Feb 10 I moved the swarm that moved into this trap on Feb 5th, and now I'm watching and waiting for a new swarm to move in. YouTube is archiving all this footage, so if it happens, we'll be able to play it back the next day.

Note that this is a separate camera. The main BeeCam is also live.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

The drones are flying, today!

Someone's getting lucky 

Well, the queens are getting lucky. The drones have no idea what's in store for them.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Scouts at the swarm trap!!!!

There's been nothing on this camera for 6 weeks, but this morning we've gone from zero to 6 scouts in less than an hour. And it's only 9:00 AM!

Watch this space! 
[video]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIVY11504PcY2sy2qpRhiMg/live[/video]


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## sc-bee (May 10, 2005)

Did a swarm go in? I really dislike the music....maybe they do toooo.... sorry...


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Not yet. Right now it's just scouts. 

But it's a lot of scouts! I think it's very, very close to a quorum.


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

Looks like a lot of activity on that trap !!!!!

This is sooooo cool. Thank you for doing this and sharing !!!!


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

tons of bees around the swarm trap.  You sure a swarm didn't move in ? If not yet, it looks like all the scouts are having the final once over view prior to bringing back the swarm !!!!!

You may want to put the swarm trap in the Swarm / trap out / cut out page. It deserves it's own thread !!!!!!


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure that they're scouts any more. 

I don't seee any pollen coming in, and they don't really behave like they "own the place" yet, but they've been doing this for two days. 

I can't look at the previous 4 days because the camera was down due to a power supply failure. inch: so it's possible that they moved in just before I got it fixed. 

I'm in India for another 5 days, so I can't go down and check it, and the people at home won't go near it. 

So everyone please put in your vote/opinion. Residents? Or scouts?


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

I'm going to guess scouts still.... I haven't seen one bit of pollen come in on this feed yet. ( not like your other hive you have streaming )


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

RedBarn said:


> I'm going to guess scouts still.... I haven't seen one bit of pollen come in on this feed yet. ( not like your other hive you have streaming )


Yeah, that's my gut feeling, too. Their behavior just looks too inquisitive and not so businesslike.

In my (short) experience, residents just come and go like they're on a mission, like they have some place to go or something definite to do.

Scouts sorta wander around the bait hive, pondering, thinking about stuff, changing their minds, etc.

I'm definitely sensing the latter from this bunch today, despite seeing more than 15 at a time. 

Seeley says,



> As soon as the number of scouts visible near the entrance to a box reached about 15—a threshold confirmed by other experiments—the bees at that box sensed that a quorum had been reached, and they returned to the swarm with the news.
> 
> “‘It was a race,’ Seeley says. ‘Which site was going to build up 15 bees first?’


C'mon ladies! It's perfect! What are you waiting for? Do I need to put in a shoe closet or something?


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

Son of a B......

I missed the start of it at 1:12 - your time Water Bug !!!!!! 

I sure hope you have the ability to go back and create a video of the whole thing......

So mad I missed it, but so cool I got to see some of it !!!!!


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

I see at 3:21:10 one of your new ladies has her pollen baskets full coming in to the new digs !!!!!

Guess you didn't need the shoe closet Water Bug !!!!!


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

It happened?!?!?!?

I'm in India right now, so I was asleep for the last 8 hours. I must have gone to sleep just as it was starting. inch:

Yes, YouTube should be creating an archive of the video. But it takes a few hours (and sometimes a day or two) for it to be available. :waiting:

If I look at my Video Manager there's a 7-hour video that ended at 5:30 PM (camera time), so that should have captured it all. But YT says it's "processing" and I have no idea how long that will take. 

Was it epic? How many bees did I get? Did anyone count as they went in?


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

Bug, I got on a few hours after it happened.... I could see it was totally different activity so I scrolled back the two hours of buffer you tube would let me...
There was a serious March going in !!!!

I was soooo jazzed to see what I could. 

Can't wait to see from the beginning! !!

I hope when you get home you can reset another on camera.

I'm jazzed for ya, and jazzed you set up the video feed. !!!

I can't wait tI'll the weather warms here in WI so I can get my traps out. Snowing like a beast here as I am in my workshop making a few bottom boards.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

IAmTheWaterbug said:


> It happened?!?!?!?


It happened!!!!! 

YT finally finished its processing, and the video is available to view:

[video]https://youtu.be/Zwl-NjRIn6k?t=2h44m0s[/video]

If you open this on YouTube.com there are clickable notations in YouTube time (e.g. the time on the scrollbar), not camera time (e.g. the timestamp in the upper left):

2:00:00-ish: Peak scout activity. There are as many as 15-20 scouts visible outside the box, plus many more inside.

Before 2:15:00-ish: There are still many scouts coming and going, judging the site and returning to the swarm to inform their sisters.

2:25:00--Some time before this mark, a quorum is established, and the scouts return to the swarm ball to inform everyone that they've found the perfect home. Scouts leaving significantly outnumber scouts arriving, until there are at most 1 or 2 scouts visible at the hive. 

2:44:00--The swarm begins to arrive at the box.

2:46:00--The march is in full swing!

3:05:00--Move-in is mostly complete.

This coming Sunday: Time to move the colony to my bee yard and reset the trap!


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

Anxious to watch it all !

Thank you again from WI for putting a live streaming camera there, and for going to reset a trap !!!!!

Way cool !!!


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

IAmTheWaterbug said:


> [video]https://youtu.be/Zwl-NjRIn6k?t=2h44m0s[/video]


Discussion:

$5 Starbucks Gift Card to the first person to spot the queen and mark the time 
Can anyone see when the quorum leaves the trap? I'm guessing it's between 2:00:00 and 2:25:00, but I don't see any event that looks like 15-30 bees leaving together. From my reading of Seeley, the quorum gets established inside the box, and there's some trigger that causes them to return to the swarm ball to announce "Eureka!"
Does anyone know how long it takes the quorum to get the colony moving?
How fast do bees fly?
If we can establish when the quorum leaves, how fast they fly, and how long it takes them to "warm up" the hive, we can figure out approximately how far away the swarm was. I just hope it wasn't 30 feet (e.g. the distance to my apiary ).
If I get ambitious I'd like to put a camera inside the my next trap, so I can see the quorum forming. It would be interesting to see the "trigger" event.


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

WaterBut,

I think I found your queen....... I have a screen shot of her I think and times. Did you think you saw her ?


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Awesome! Please post just the time, plus or minus 30 seconds, and let us all try to to find her before you post the screen capture.


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

I think I see her, but be interested if others think the same. Between 2:44:45 and 2:45:30 is when I think I see her majesty.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

I'm not seeing her, but:


I'm lousy at queenspotting.
I'm in a hotel in India with horrible internet, so the resolution is terrible.
It's been a really long day, so my eyes are shot.

Does anyone else see her among the thousands?

Speaking of which, what's everyone's guess as to how many bees were in this swarm?


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

To take a wild guess, assuming there is 10,000 bees in a 3 pound package, I would bet you have caught a swarm with 25,000 bees in it. ( but, that is just a wild guess ) 

Please take pictures of what the hive looks like when you pop open the cover. That may give a better idea of numbers from more experienced keeps than me.

I've slowed down the video and looked at the time frame I gave for the Queen sighting, and I'm pretty sure I see her. Moves different than the other bees, wags her back side like the lady in charge, and even other bees around her seem to act different....


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

Man, this is soooo cool to have the video, why is activity so low here on your thread Bug ?

Start a thread in the swarm,trap,cutout area. 

Maybe it's cause I love watching activities of scouts, and caught the move in at the tail end...

I'm really amazed this thread hasn't blown up. People don't know what you have under the current title and location of the thread.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

RedBarn said:


> Start a thread in the swarm,trap,cutout area.


Done!

I'll leave this thread for discussion of the live BeeCams. 

Of course this trap will be reset in a few days, so I hope we get to do this all over again!


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## pjigar (Sep 13, 2016)

I was inspired by this thread to setup my own live BeeCam. I used similar hardware as OP but I am capturing and uploading from the same Raspberry Pi 3 board.


Edit: The youtube link address keeps changing because I restart the live streaming every now and then so I am posting the link to my channel which should have the live stream.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1FvhMKPFJyzMZ3g-flPdA


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

pjigar said:


> I was inspired by this thread to setup my own live BeeCam. I used similar hardware as OP but I am capturing and uploading from the same Raspberry Pi 3 board.
> 
> 
> Edit: The youtube link address keeps changing because I restart the live streaming every now and then so I am posting the link to my channel which should have the live stream.
> ...


Very cool! What software stack are you using? I can see you're using UV4Linux at the bottom, but how are you feeding it to YouTube? I started with a prepackaged image with an RTSP server, but then I couldn't compile ffmpeg on it. I could start from scratch, except that I would need help figuring out the stack .

My main BeeCam is now a commercially-available Reolink camera (via a Pi-based ffmpeg "relay station"), but my second Swarm Trap Cam is still Pi-based.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

The BeeCam at Painted Peacock Manor is alive again! The streamer was crashing every few days, which knocked the live feed off of YouTube. But I just implemented a new watchdog timer over TG, so it should be up pretty much all the time now:

https://www.youtube.com/user/IAmTheWaterbug/live

That link doesn't work on a phone, for some reason, but it works on a PC or Mac.

If you're on a phone you might have to use this one:

https://youtu.be/jAz7fdeVpOk


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

Nice, my hives no longer show this much activity, so I’ll watch yours instead until spring.


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