# Sensors inside and the Bee hive. The tech behind the buzz.



## BeinAl (May 24, 2014)

Extremely cool, would love to have a setup like this. :thumbsup:


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## Fishman43 (Sep 26, 2011)

Sounds neat and way over my head. There are several companies trying to make a commercial go of this same idea. Arnia in the EU and another here in the US that monitors give sound... All very cool, and something I would like to play with if the price points are low enough.


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## AL from Georgia (Jul 14, 2014)

This is cool, do you have a website?


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## Snowfighter (Nov 7, 2012)

Sounds very promising. It could really be a help in early detection of potential problems.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Would love to have a set up like that for weight, a guy could really pinpoint flows that way


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## libhart (Apr 22, 2010)

Gotta toot my own horn a little. I've only got this running to one hive on a stand that has a few hives, but I've got my arduino reading a weather station (wind/rain/temp) plus a temp/humidity sensor in the hive plus a scale that the hive sits on. Sends it all back by radio, gets stored in a postgres DB.

It worked for years, but isn't now. As a friend said I've got "attenuation via vegetation"  I have a homemade fence panel behind the hives and there's a Major Wheeler growing on it. It has now gone over the top of the panel and around the box that the arduino/battery are in and it's thick enough that it actually prevents the radio from reliably transmitting. Have to get out there to clean it all off soon.

Adding the scale is now your next project. :thumbsup:


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## GGTilton (Dec 6, 2014)

Interesting. I spent 20 years as an RF engineer, another 20 in IT. I have considered monitors on my hives, but I am still in burn out mode. So for now I will just read about your work. Thanks for the information.


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

Interesting.

I'm an EE specializing in automation. I just finished startup on an automated manufacturing line that logs 16,000 data points every 200 milliseconds, but I am I'm trying to resist the temptation to mix tech with beekeeping. My hobbies are my escape from what would otherwise be a tech saturated life (more on that in my intro post). But that doesn't mean I don't think what others are doing in the field isn't interesting. It is probably not necessary for you to log data every five minutes, conditions in a hive just are not going to change that fast. You can probably cut down to once every 30 minutes or even once an hour. Also only report the data that has changed. That might make using solar power a little more practical and decrease your battery needs.


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## Screenname56 (Feb 4, 2015)

This is way over my head,still interesting. I read somewhere that bees made a distinct sound before they swarmed. If you could figure that out, your idea could be marketable.
Just a thought.


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

I have zero tech skills...will have to look up what an arduino is...yet I find this interesting.
In the medical world we have monitors that live time lots of things from the body. It would be nice if such units were available to monitor hive weight, humidity, temp and perhaps things like Co2 to give an idea of bee activity levels.
Seems that commercial units are yet a long ways off.
Grozzie on this list has set up hive weight tacking.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Screenname56 said:


> I read somewhere that bees made a distinct sound before they swarmed. If you could figure that out ...



No need for an Arduino for that .... 

http://www.beesource.com/build-it-yourself/apidictor/


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

My setup is rather crude, but it works. The hive is sitting atop a scale, electronics in a nuc box right beside it. There is a little embedded computer in the nuc, which communicates over a wifi link to the network, and logs readings into a mysql database. I have a few scripts that generate plots, and push them out to a website hourly. The setup looks like this:-



I account for all equipment going on, and off that colony to keep the progress lines linear, and the outuput it generates looks like this:-










It's been an interesting exercise, we've been able to plot out what blooms are producers, and what aren't, based on the graphs. Early in February we got a real surprise, hive started gaining weight suddenly, and watching at the entrance, there was some pollen coming in. The weight gains in late November were easy to understand, heavy rain season started and the wood went from 'bone dry' to 'waterlogged'. But February was different, and it prompted me to take a look a month earlier than we normally would. The bees had started brood, a month earlier than I would consider normal.


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## dingbatca (Feb 25, 2015)

Time to talk about sensors, cost/infrastructure and commercialization.

*Sensors inside the hive*
*Temperature*: This is one of the most basic sensors we can place in a bee hive. It’s not entirely all that useful by itself. The bees like to move around and actually do a very good job at retaining heat. I find this about the equivalent to placing a temperature on a human’s pinky finger. You can tell if the person is alive, but you have no clue what the core temp is. Temperature requires almost zero resources to read, process, store, and transmit. Temperature sensors are very cheap $.

*Weight*: I have seen people doing this (Grozzie2, that's awesome!). Perhaps one of the most valuable data points. Easy to tell when the hive swarms, honey production, inspection, growth… I have entertained this many times but never figured out how to build a scalable cost effective solution. Weight requires almost zero resources to read, process, store, and transmit. I have not found any cheap way to pull this off.

*Sound*: Perhaps one of the most fascinating sensors. I have been staying away from using a sound sensor in each hive because of cost. Its fine to build a dictated peace of hardware, but what happens as more sound signatures are discovered? How would you update the sound sensor? A good microphone is relatively cheap but it’s the cost to read, process, store, and transmit the data that really puts a damper on any large scale version. Perhaps someone smarter than I can find a better way.

*Humidity*: This is one of the most basic sensors we can place in a bee hive, as long as the bees don’t clog it. I have no clue on the usefulness of reading humidity. Perhaps someone with access to real data can do a write up on this thread. Medium cost sensor. Same power, computational, and data requirements as the temperature sensor.

*Bee Counter*: I happen to know a fellow bee keeper with a few of these setup on his hives. The concept is simple, and series of gates that count the numbers of bees moving in/out, and direction. In reality this is a completed sensor. Really cool data, but required a large external power source. Requires almost zero resources to store, and transmit this data. High cost, high complexity sensor.

*Co2*: Oh! That’s a fun idea! I have no info on this one.

*Sensors outside the hive*
The normal weather station (Temp/humidity/pressure/wind) are nice. Other sensors I would think very valuable would be sun light, rain (and/or rain fall), clouds, and GPS.

*Cost, infrastructure and commercialization*
None of this works, at any scale if the cost is too much. For me, this project started off as a commercial idea. It has not made it off the ground, yet… There are a few things to look at when talking about cost. As an end beekeeper (hobby or commercial scale) how much is this going to cost? We can’t answer that until we understand the in-field infrastructure.

Infrastructure, as I currently see it looks something like this. 3 parts: A smart frame, a smart lid, and the cloud services. Currently I am running a combination smart lid/frame with WiFi (XBee) and long wires running to each hive with temperature sensors at the end.

*Smart frame*: Something like an Arduino. Turns out an Atmega328p, the heart of an Arduino, can run on 2 AA batteries for years, as long as we keep the sampling rate down, and the sensors don’t require constant power. My current sampling rate is once every 5 minutes, but after years of data, once every 15m would also be fine. There are lots of different low power wireless option that would have a 500ft+ range and only needed to be turned on for 1 second every sample period. Done correctly the wireless would have some basic mesh capabilities in order to reach the nearest smart lid. This could literally be imbedded into a stand frame’s top bar. No more need for solar! This whole setup with a few simple sensors could be setup for less than $10 a frame, onetime cost.

*Smart Lid*: This is the infield computational horse power and storage. This lid would have a large solar panel built in. Under the hood, so to speak, there would be a small, embedded computer. Basically it would be something like a Raspberry Pi (The Raspberry Pi is an example, in practices it would be the worst possible choice) with a cell phone modem attached. The hobbyist version would have standard house hold wireless (802.11/WiFi). There would be a custom wireless device also attached to connect to the smart frame network. None of this is very costly, but all together would come out around $100 to the beekeeper. It’s a onetime cost and you only need one smart lid per bee yard.

The Cloud service. This is just a website that makes this mass of data readable to the end users. The smart lid’s would upload their data sets a few times a day to this website. Need a good website name, something catchy, like beemonitor.com or beevitals.com. I have spent most of my time refining what this would look like and what would be required. Sadly I am not a web developer and building such a web site is beyond me. But what would all this cost to the end beekeeper?

*Cost*:
The only way I have found to make this a profitable enterprise would be to charge a subscription. Think of this just like a cell phone bill. Something like a $2/month/per hive model. There would be a few catches like the cell phone enabled smart lid would have a minimum cost of $15/month… There would also be a few perks like discounts for high volume customers. Save 10% when you have 100+ hives….

Cost for me as a hobby beekeeper. I have 2 hives, + a bait hive. I would need 3 smart frames + a WiFi smart lid. So something close to $130, one time + a $6/month subscription. I am not sure about other people, but I would be happy to pay $6/month for access to a nice website with full data logging of my hives.

Cost does not matter if the commercial bee keeper does not find it useful. I am not a commercial bee keeper, so I have no clue what they would want to see. 

Oh fun times!


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

I actually think humidity is a more sensitive winter-time indicator of hive health than temperature. If the bees are on food, then the humidity will be relatively high, since they expire water when metabolizing food. If they run out of food, they will be able to maintain hive temps for a little while before exhausting their bodies' energy reserves and succumbing to cold weather. In other words, once internal hive temp falls off, it is too late to do anything to save them. A fall-off of humidity gives you a little more time (a few more hours?) to intervene (if that is an option).

JMHO


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## dingbatca (Feb 25, 2015)

Shinbone. And that is exactly why I posted up the big list of sensors. I never would have though of that!


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

shinbone said:


> I actually think humidity is a more sensitive winter-time indicator of hive health than temperature.


Thats a location issue. In our part of the world, once December rolls around, humidity will peg at 90+%, and stay there till March. Measurements that dont provide any useful amount of change, provide no useful data either. Temperature on the other hand, very useful. If temps inside the hive reach ambient outside temp, hive is dead. If they stay above ambient outside, hive is alive.


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## dingbatca (Feb 25, 2015)

Grozzie2... You are 90% correct. You are assuming that the bee ball is large enough to heat the whole hive body and the temperature sensor is close enough to them. I have had hives go down to 200 bees during winter, and decide to move to a far corner of the hive. My current "BaitHive1" has done this a few time. I go crack the lid only to find a little ball of bee alive and happy.

I dont think any single sensor can say if a hive is alive or dead.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

dingbatca said:


> *Weight*: I have seen people doing this (Grozzie2, that's awesome!). Perhaps one of the most valuable data points. Easy to tell when the hive swarms, honey production, inspection, growth… I have entertained this many times but never figured out how to build a scalable cost effective solution. Weight requires almost zero resources to read, process, store, and transmit. I have not found any cheap way to pull this off.


If only weight were simple to measure, then there would be lots of methods in place to do it. I've got an off the shelf scale under mine, small platform scale that has a serial port, and it's connected to a serial port on a tiny embedded computer, a little mips based board that has on board wifi. It's got 8 meg of flash, with 32 meg of ram, and runs a custom firmware build I made based on an embedded linux. The setup is simple, cron script that runs every 5 minutes, reads the scale, then just spawns wget to put the data into a database under a web server in my closet.

BUT, that's where the 'simple' part ends. Electronic scales are invariably based on some sort of pressure sensor, and all of those are sensative to temperature. I developed temperature corrections for my scale by leaving an intert lump of steel (an anvil, something that wont absorb moisture when humidity changes) on it for a significant length of time, and weighing it every 5 minutes. I also have a temperature sensor in the system. After a few months, big number crunch, and I have the temperature correction terms figured out for my scale. So, when we power it up, it zeros itself, I record the zero point temperature, and after that, all weights are temp adjusted from there. Without the temperature correction happening, my scale acts more like a thermometer than a scale. Here is a graph of corrected vs uncorrected data from a long time back. Blue line is raw readings, red line is my first run at doing temperature correction. As you can see, without doing temperature correction on the scale data, it's essentially useless for the most part. The intraday changes due to temperature are far larger than the intraday changes due to bee activity.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

It would be interesting to see hive temperature and humidity graphed together (dingbatca hint hint)

Grozzie2 - Good point on the local humidity requirements for hive humidity to be useful. Here in Denver, our typical winter time humidity is around 15%, and sometime as low as 10%.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

dingbatca said:


> Grozzie2... You are 90% correct. You are assuming that the bee ball is large enough to heat the whole hive body and the temperature sensor is close enough to them. I have had hives go down to 200 bees during winter, and decide to move to a far corner of the hive. My current "BaitHive1" has done this a few time. I go crack the lid only to find a little ball of bee alive and happy.
> 
> I dont think any single sensor can say if a hive is alive or dead.


This is where we probably differ some in opinion. As far as I'm concerned, a hive down to 200 bees during winter is dead, they just dont know it yet. It's highly unlikely that many bees will be able to build up to a viable population in the spring. It may be different in other areas where spring temps dont dip down into frosty territory overnight, but around here, if they cant cover 2 frames of brood during the overnight temp dips, then they dont have much hope of expanding to a productive size.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

libhart said:


> It worked for years, but isn't now. As a friend said I've got "attenuation via vegetation"  I have a homemade fence panel behind the hives and there's a Major Wheeler growing on it. It has now gone over the top of the panel and around the box that the arduino/battery are in and it's thick enough that it actually *prevents the radio from reliably transmitting*. Have to get out there to clean it all off soon.


Water absorbs RF energy, more so at higher frequencies, especially in the GHz range. That's why microwave ovens work. The radio is probably transmitting just fine...it's just that the leaves of the plant are sucking up all of the energy. Sounds like the plant likes it.



> I dont think any single sensor can say if a hive is alive or dead.


A sensor that can detect the vibration of the bee's muscles as they attempt to keep themselves warm?



> Cost, infrastructure and commercialization
> ...
> The Cloud service. This is just a website that makes this mass of data readable to the end users. The smart lid’s would upload their data sets a few times a day to this website. Need a good website name, something catchy, like beemonitor.com or beevitals.com. I have spent most of my time refining what this would look like and what would be required. Sadly I am not a web developer and building such a web site is beyond me. But what would all this cost to the end beekeeper?


Cloud service, external website (and name) aren't necessary. An old spare (and otherwise scrap) PC, even something with an old 486 processor running a small Linux (TurboLinux?) and Apache, and maybe MySQL would work (and a few other modules for data acquisition, etc.). Wireless router receives the data and passes it to the Linux box. Routing table in the router points to the Linux box IP, give it a name if you want, for web access on the local network. If your Inet service gives you a static IP you can set it up for you to access from anywhere...a little trickier if you don't have a static IP, but it can be done.


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## dingbatca (Feb 25, 2015)

BadBeeKeeper. You missed my point. That was for a commercialized version. For a home solution, you are 100% correct. Any old PC will work. I did that for years.

In the last few years I have found a server in the cloud to be more cost effective. If I can get the data to my house network, I can get it to the cloud. Currently using digitalocean.com. The cloud server gives you the static IP and only costs $5/month! Makes life so easy.


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## libhart (Apr 22, 2010)

In the winter, at least where it's reasonably cold, the temp sensor will tell you if your hive is alive or dead. At night a dead hive is just going to hit the ambient temp where a living hive will be noticeably above it. I actually have bought a really cheap thermometer with a probe at the end of a wire. Tape the probe to a piece of solid wire (like a piece of coat hanger) and you can stick this into the notch in your inner cover on a cold day and watch the temp rise if the hive is alive. Just a few inches will do, easy way to check a hive w/o disturbing it.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

dingbatca said:


> You missed my point.


No, actually, I didn't. My counterpoint was addressing a question of whether there would be a large enough [potential] market for you, to make such a commercial enterprise viable as you envision it. However, I think you may be behind the curve. The Dec. '14 issue of Bee Culture featured an article on this company: http://www.arnia.co.uk

You are basically using a homebrew solution and attempting to find a means of commercializing it. In my opinion (which could very well be wrong), as it stands now, your rig with it's open-source roots would appeal more to the DIY crowd who might be less inclined to opt for your subscription model. Those who are not DIYers already have a very slick-looking solution available with built-in access to the 2g cellular network, remote monitoring and SMS/e-mail alerting capabilities. Users do not need to have their own website/domain name or 'Cloud' service. I think you'll have to do better if you want to compete with them.


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## dingbatca (Feb 25, 2015)

I dont want to compete. My commercial version never got off the ground. Currently it's just a DIY ridge, including the duct tape. Some day if I can gather the correct people, we will build a commercial version. For now I am just droking around and happy to help any one else who wants to setup a similar ridge.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

OK, got it.

I do think it's pretty cool doing it with those boards, I'd never heard of them before so I had to go and look them up.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

dingbatca said:


> Time to talk about sensors, cost/infrastructure and commercialization.


Would a QMP sensor be useful? Is a QMP detector even possible?


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## dingbatca (Feb 25, 2015)

QMP sensor? Got any links?


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

dingbatca said:


> QMP sensor? Got any links?


Queen Mandibular Pheromone, or what I like to call "Happy Queen Scent."


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## dingbatca (Feb 25, 2015)

I have no clue. Is it even possible to detect electronically?


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## Pete O (Jul 13, 2013)

I'm another RF EE. My hives have a 4 inch acrylic tube venting the top rear of each hive. If I see condensation, I know I have too much humidity. Each top and bottom box have a cheap thermometer with a 7" probe; these allow me to watch the cluster temp and the food source temps. I don't need anything else. If the temps drop below my arbitrary temperature, I may turn on a very low wattage hive heater mounted in the bottom screen. It's interesting to do elaborate measurements but in the long run I just don't see the necessity. Bees will survive without data tracking; they are very versatile. With the versatility comes variables, and with variables the data becomes less important. Just an opinion.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

BadBeeKeeper said:


> The Dec. '14 issue of Bee Culture featured an article on this company: http://www.arnia.co.uk


Last time I checked, and I'll admit it's been a while, that setup ran in the thousands of dollars, and then it needs a monthly cellular data setup as well. I dont see a lot of folks going down that road other than research setups etc.


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

Our hospital CO2 sensor is a thing called a capnograph. It sits in the endotracheal tube. Have no idea how it would work in a bee hive but think it could be done.


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

Where I live outside humidity in summer is very high...most of the time it is raining or higher yet when about to rain. Expect outside humidity would alter inside humidity.



shinbone said:


> I actually think humidity is a more sensitive winter-time indicator of hive health than temperature. If the bees are on food, then the humidity will be relatively high, since they expire water when metabolizing food. If they run out of food, they will be able to maintain hive temps for a little while before exhausting their bodies' energy reserves and succumbing to cold weather. In other words, once internal hive temp falls off, it is too late to do anything to save them. A fall-off of humidity gives you a little more time (a few more hours?) to intervene (if that is an option).
> 
> JMHO


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## libhart (Apr 22, 2010)

Pete O said:


> It's interesting to do elaborate measurements but in the long run I just don't see the necessity. Bees will survive without data tracking; they are very versatile. With the versatility comes variables, and with variables the data becomes less important. Just an opinion.


Oh I totally agree. The elaborate measurements don't really help the bees. For me it's just fun to see if I can do it myself. Conquering the technology is really the reward. Well, a scale does help management, gotta give that one.


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## bdouglas (Dec 18, 2014)

Maybe you could put together a prototype and find out who the Anderson guys used for marketing, and put it on Indiegogo and get $3 or 4 million in a week.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

grozzie2 said:


> Last time I checked, and I'll admit it's been a while, *that setup ran in the thousands of dollars*


Yeah, I expect it would. Definitely not for me. I'd have to do wi-fi and a linux box, need a couple of repeaters/extenders to get the signal to the house, and it would all need to be solar powered. Still too expensive, for now...guess I'll have to keep walking out there, oh well, I need the exercise anyway...


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## Matt F (Oct 7, 2014)

What a great idea. I've flirted with lots of this but don't have the tech know-how to make it happen. One suggestion that you probably don't want :lookout: (we're funny like that aren't we)

If you wanted to commercialize & sell it, consider putting EVERYTHING into the "smart lid." Solar cell, battery, transmitter, and all the sensors that you can. Maybe get a small wireless sensor for temperature that the beekeeper can push into the center of the cluster, but that would have to be wirelessly synched to the smart lid. The idea would be to sell the lid so any beekeeper could buy it and find it on his wireless network and start watching data. Personally I'd forego the cluster center temp sensor and just find a way to get temperatures from the lid, maybe with an IR sensor or something?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

BadBeeKeeper said:


> and it would all need to be solar powered.


That's why we still have one hive on a stand, just behind the house, within reach of a 50' extension cord. Power problems solved, and no real need to fuss with trying to put together low power stuff, just used a bunch of things I already had kicking around.

I could do it out back in the bee yard with a big enough solar panel, but, for that amount of money I can have another colony, complete with boxes, bees, frames and feeders. I'm using the scale as a way to get hard data on when various flows are happening, and the colony behind the house works just fine for that. As far as much of the other things folks could be interested in, to become useful data one needs to kit out all the hives. By the end of the summer I'll have 25+ on the back lot, so not much chance of that happening. I'll stick with one hive on a scale, within reach of the extension cord, makes life simpler, and gives me a lot of data that's useful for making decisions.


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## dingbatca (Feb 25, 2015)

Just got the pricing sheet from Arnia. OUCH!


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

I don't know if this has been mentioned on the forum previously or not, but those of you interested in instrumenting your hives may be interested in this NASA proposal for tracking data from honeybee hives.



> To help track and monitor these changes, we are proposing a Honey Bee Climate Network made up of volunteers monitoring of honey bee nectar flows & plant phenology via the Internet. Over time, we can help top preserve records for long-term archiving, and expand the network to include more users/contributors and to include satellite data to establish links to the timing of nectar flow.


More information at http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov/About/ScaleHives.htm


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

JConnolly said:


> I don't know if this has been mentioned on the forum previously or not, but those of you interested in instrumenting your hives may be interested in this NASA proposal for tracking data from honeybee hives.
> 
> 
> 
> More information at http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov/About/ScaleHives.htm


More "climate change" stuff. Rhetorical question: Why in the heck is this coming out of the NASA budget? Wouldn't this be more under the jurisdiction of the NOAA?


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

Gonna resurrect this old thread a bit. 

I got a promo code for 99% off this Thermopro TP60 Indoor Outdoor Thermometer Humidity Monitor with Temperature Gauge Humidity Meter, Wireless Digital Hygrometer, 200ft/60m Range, so I was able to order it for $0.15, shipped. 

Sorry, folks, but it was a single-use promo code, so I can't share it.

I wonder how useful this would be in a hive. The sensor module is pretty large, so I don't think I could just drop it into a standard hive box without screwing up the spacing. But I probably could cut a sensor-sized hole in the side of a box and insert the sensor to seal the box, maybe with a backing plate to ensure it doesn't fall all the way in and let all the bees out . 

If you were to put a humidity sensor in a hive, where would you put it? Top? Middle? Bottom? Facing the end bars? Facing a comb face? Facing down?


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## Sniper338 (May 1, 2017)

You are a nerd.

But with that said, it is pretty cool to get data out of it... be really neat to pin point flows and all.. pretty cool, way over my head..


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## dingbatca (Feb 25, 2015)

Yes, it is totally worth it. https://broodminder.com/

I have been placing my sensors in the top center of my hive. The exact location is not all that important, as long as you get it into a active area. That stated, your sensor is HUGE! Perhaps stripping the case off?


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

dingbatca said:


> Yes, it is totally worth it. https://broodminder.com/
> 
> I have been placing my sensors in the top center of my hive. The exact location is not all that important, as long as you get it into a active area. That stated, your sensor is HUGE! Perhaps stripping the case off?


Yes, but it's free! ($0.15).

The first thing I'll do when I get it is take it apart


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