# Thermal Image Gun



## Leather Jim (Jun 30, 2013)

Ian, What are we looking at exactly? Did you form an opinion on utilizing this info? I've been considering one of the Flir one units for the iphone for winter checks of cluster location. They are on sale this weekend. Your thoughts on the high dollar unit would be helpful.

Thanks


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## dgl1948 (Oct 5, 2005)

I use an infrared thermometer from time to time. Our bees winter outside. I just shoot the beam through the upper entrance. The stronger hives give a higher inside temperature reading. The ones that read the same as the outside temperature are dead outs.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Leather Jim said:


> Ian, What are we looking at exactly?


What your seeing is hives in singles stacked 6 high, and rowed. The front of the hives are exposed along the isles, the heat in each box shows the yellow red orange. I was using the gun on auto calibration and I was having trouble making sense of the read out as it kept changing its temperature scale. Tomorrow I'm going to manually adjust the read out scale to see if I can get a more consistent readout and see if it is possible to assess the hive's strength by reading the hive heat signature.


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## Hobo (Mar 4, 2014)

First you need to make sure the image is in focus. Next you should accurately adjust your camera to the emissivity of the material you are imaging. (Not sure if your camera has this setting or not.) Next you need to adjust the camera for the reflected temperatures for the environment you are shooting in. You need to also make sure that you are not mistaking reflected heat for a warm surface. (Move the camera around until you do not have heat sources reflecting off the surface you are imaging.) You should also adjust your settings for span and temperature ranges so that you will be able to detect slight differences in temperature. 

Hope this helps.


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

Ian,
I have one of those guns for work. It is going to be tough to assess as the clusters could be in different positions in each hive. If you do figure it out I would love to see the images.


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

They also speak of a phone add on called the Seek. It can also be used with an iphone 6 ...the flir one can't.
Does anyone know if the Seek can accurately determine heat, and potentially health, of a hive.
Also can these units do a drcent thermo scan on bodies of humans, dogs and horses. If so it would be useful as an aid in musculoskeletal assessment.



Leather Jim said:


> Ian, What are we looking at exactly? Did you form an opinion on utilizing this info? I've been considering one of the Flir one units for the iphone for winter checks of cluster location. They are on sale this weekend. Your thoughts on the high dollar unit would be helpful.
> 
> Thanks


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## rskenny (Jun 8, 2014)

From what i read once your phone is dead it may not fit on the next i phone


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## Leather Jim (Jun 30, 2013)

Well, I ordered a Flir one, should have it by the end of the week. I'll try it out and report back. If it will allow me to determine the location of the cluster and possibly size that would be great. Also if it fails I have 30 days to return it, worth the risk of shipping cost imo.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

JodieToadie said:


> Ian,
> I have one of those guns for work. It is going to be tough to assess as the clusters could be in different positions in each hive. If you do figure it out I would love to see the images.


I found the focus and boy did it make a difference. I also locked in the heat scale so the gun did not bounce around between colour scales while reading the variable temperatures within the room. 



Jodie I noticed something interesting while using this gun that you had touched on in another conversation earlier while moving your hives inside. Below is a picture of a group of stacked hives. As seen in this picture, the two top left hives show a large heat signature, while the hives around them show little. Four out of the six hives around these two hot hives hold an identical cluster size….
The activity differences between the hives surprised me and for that reason trying to accurately assess my hives using the gun did not prove useful. 



This picture shows hives at the end of one of the rows, which shows the front and side of the hives. To get an accurate measurement of the hives size I would need to be able to look at more than just the front of each hive.



So I figure I could get just about the same information from looking in the front of the hives as I did with this gun. BUT there is a cool factor here that I am going to explore in the future!


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

Your gun is much nicer than mine. I have a 3 year old FLUKE T19 and I can't even get that nice of an image. I came to the same conclusion on the hive assessment, if you could get a picture of all sides it might help. It does show how much the super does insulate and it is pretty amazing how it can pick up the heat signature of a single bee crawling around. 
Cool factor is a 10+.


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

Dumb question after seeing your pictures. What temperature was your room at? Picture #2 gives the impression that the room is ~2 degrees.


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## sjj (Jan 2, 2007)

Leather Jim said:


> Ian, What are we looking at exactly? Did you form an opinion on utilizing this info?


@Ian
You will have many dead bees on the floor. Bees begin to crawl at about 8°C under the cluster. I am not sure. Maybe it was 7°C.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

JodieToadie said:


> Dumb question after seeing your pictures. What temperature was your room at? Picture #2 gives the impression that the room is ~2 degrees.


Air temp holding consistently at 4 degrees.
Last week I was talking to a producer who keeps his shed at 8 degrees, another at 10.


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

Ian said:


> Air temp holding consistently at 4 degrees.
> Last week I was talking to a producer who keeps his shed at 8 degrees, another at 10.


Wow that would not leave much cushion at all. They must have huge air movers when they get above 10. It could easily lead to a parabolic increase in temperature. Brooding would also increase as well as pollen consumption and stores. 

Are the producers you mention successful over the long term wintering? Or do they have above average losses? 

I am really pondering raising temperatures in mid- February. Throwing in a frame feeder and a pollen patty to see if I could get a stronger hive out of the shed. I don't think I would sustain those temperatures all year though. 
To get back on topic, do you think that the hot hives were brooding more?


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

JodieToadie said:


> I am really pondering raising temperatures in mid- February. Throwing in a frame feeder and a pollen patty to see if I could get a stronger hive out of the shed. I don't think I would sustain those temperatures all year though.
> To get back on topic, do you think that the hot hives were brooding more?


Has anyone in your circumstances tried this? My concern would be what will the bees do with the waste that builds up in their system without cleansing flights?

Ian, you need more of a 3D image, how much does that run? Christmas is coming up you know...


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

JSL said:


> My concern would be what will the bees do with the waste that builds up in their system without cleansing flights?


I don't know if anyone has tried it. I know some have had to feed sucrose indoors including myself. The waste does build up in their system without cleansing flights. As soon as they cleanse a good percentage die during the flight. If the bees are new they would have less fecal matter in their guts as it stands to reason. But if noone has tried it, how would I know unless I try it? I suppose it could lead to dysentary but so does leaving the bees indoors for 6 months. Just ask any of us indoor wintering types what color everything is come first flight in spring. (It's speckled brown.)


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Feeding sucrose is a lot different from feeding pollen supplement in terms of solids. Just be cautious.


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## Allen Martens (Jan 13, 2007)

Ian said:


>


It appears as though some of the hives have a lot of heat coming from the pallets. Is that so? Seems strange.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

I find my thermal imager pretty handy. The shot below was made by pulling out the entrance reducer and shooting up to the bottom of the frames. There's no science behind this, just looking for some warmth from the bee space between the middle frames. It gives me confidence that there is a nice warm cluster still alive. I bought the imager for my consulting business, but it is pretty clear to me that it has uses for beekeeping.

Although two warm days, Sunday and Monday, are even more comforting as the bees came out to play.


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## Leather Jim (Jun 30, 2013)

Flir one for iphone came today. Just a quick check on some of the 50 nucs shows that it works well on the smaller boxes, these are 4 over 4's on common bottoms. I only have one 10 frame double deep at the home yard and I couldn't get a cluster location. Probably bottom box and centered. I was able to see heat at the upper entrance though. 

I will take the flir to an out yard later this week and see what happens. So far I would say its worth keeping.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Allen Martens said:


> It appears as though some of the hives have a lot of heat coming from the pallets. Is that so? Seems strange.


Those hives have clusters covering 8-10 frame bottoms and right down to onto the bottom board. That heat signature is heat off the cluster downwards.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Leather Jim said:


> View attachment 14751
> View attachment 14752
> 
> 
> ...


FLIR told me they had an i-phone version coming out when I dropped by their RV at a trade show a couple of years ago. They suggested it would cost less than their other cameras. Tell us more!


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

JodieToadie said:


> I am really pondering raising temperatures in mid- February. Throwing in a frame feeder and a pollen patty to see if I could get a stronger hive out of the shed.
> 
> I suppose it could lead to dysentary but so does leaving the bees indoors for 6 months.


My neighbour tested this out one year a while back. I never heard how it went... 

My objective, and only objective is to get my hives through winter. Build up is my spring time focus. Besides, encouraging a little bit of brooding in the winter shed would only aid the mites build up.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

JodieToadie said:


> Are the producers you mention successful over the long term wintering? Or do they have above average losses?


Longer than I have been wintering inside. One guy does this for his nucs, as he figures the extra warmth allows the small clusters to move if needed.


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## Allen Martens (Jan 13, 2007)

Ian said:


> Air temp holding consistently at 4 degrees.
> Last week I was talking to a producer who keeps his shed at 8 degrees, another at 10.


I usually run my temperature in the 6 to 9 degree range. If I had equipment for a tighter temp range I would probably run the temp at 7. Smaller hives have an easier time at higher tempers and don't starve in the corner as soon. I think the bees have an easier time cleaning out dead bee as well.

Another advantage of higher temperatures is less air exchange is required so relative humidity will be higher.

I don't see a problem with 10C but I think that is moving into less efficient wintering temperatures.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Allen Martens said:


> I don't see a problem with 10C but I think that is moving into less efficient wintering temperatures.


Our bees are outside, and I've kept fairly close track of when they start flying, we can see them leaving on the scale data. If I correlate the scale with the outside ambient temperature, our bees start flying at 6.8 degrees C outside temps. It's like clockwork when I compare the two data sets, temps creep up over 6.8C, and the scale immediately starts to drop as bees go out for cleansing flights.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

grozzie2 said:


> It's like clockwork when I compare the two data sets, temps creep up over 6.8C, and the scale immediately starts to drop as bees go out for cleansing flights.


interesting idea Grozzie


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

Ian said:


> My neighbour tested this out one year a while back. I never heard how it went...


So I guess we are to assume that it didn't go well as there was no bragging? 
I am a little worried as some of mine have really small clusters. (Last frost was June 5th and first frost was August 23rd.) I ran them pretty hard to get a crop last year. I was hoping to build them up in the shed and give them a fighting chance in spring. But I could just combine if worse comes to worse.


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## JodieToadie (Dec 26, 2013)

Allen Martens said:


> I usually run my temperature in the 6 to 9 degree range. If I had equipment for a tighter temp range I would probably run the temp at 7. Smaller hives have an easier time at higher tempers and don't starve in the corner as soon. I think the bees have an easier time cleaning out dead bee as well.
> 
> Another advantage of higher temperatures is less air exchange is required so relative humidity will be higher.
> 
> I don't see a problem with 10C but I think that is moving into less efficient wintering temperatures.


I ran a little higher last year ~7C but this year I am running 10KW of heaters in the building so I am trying to be cheap and run right at 5C. My carpenter did not do a proper job on the acoustical seal so I am fighting humidity unreal. If the fan ever shuts off the humidity jumps past 90% right now.


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## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

JodieToadie said:


> I am really pondering raising temperatures in mid- February. Throwing in a frame feeder and a pollen patty to see if I could get a stronger hive out of the shed.


I'd be curious to see if that would work too but I think I'd try it on only a handful of hives first, just in case. I don't overwinter inside so I haven't any experience in it but maybe others who have could let us know weather there's any brood production while their still in the sheds. One concern I would have about forcing more brood by supplimental feeding would be the lack of the proper amount of water that bees require to raise brood.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

JodieToadie said:


> So I guess we are to assume that it didn't go well as there was no bragging?
> I am a little worried as some of mine have really small clusters. (Last frost was June 5th and first frost was August 23rd.) I ran them


I know of guys that will pull hives out late winter during the first mild flight day to feed syrup, protein and wrap, pull the dead and fill empty spots, then put them back in til spring breaks. Key to this method is late winter flight before feeding. 

Give it a try Jodie and keep us posted!


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## B&E (Dec 27, 2011)

JodieToadie said:


> I ran a little higher last year ~7C but this year I am running 10KW of heaters in the building so I am trying to be cheap and run right at 5C. My carpenter did not do a proper job on the acoustical seal so I am fighting humidity unreal. If the fan ever shuts off the humidity jumps past 90% right now.


I'm wintering 612 singles inside for the first time. We winter all of ours outside, but I am trying some weaker singles inside to give them a chance. The building is well set up. I am running at 6c now but was also wondering about going a bit warmer. There is one small fan that runs at a low speed constantly and then some larger ones come on if it gets warm. The air changes every 10 mins. I shouldn't build too high humidity should I? I currently do not have a humi stat in there.


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