Best Position for internal Camera

[grizzly]

Heres a question for you budding video camera techies.

Where is the best place to site an infra red camera internally ? tried and tested ?

i guess to watch bees on frames of brood it needs to sit right down in there, so removing some broof frames to fit it in.

Or how about looking down on the tops of the brood frames, i guess not much to view unless they have expanded sufficiently into a super or two.

The hive will be a WBC.

 

[Tom Bick]

Interesting grizzly you will have to stop the bees covering it with propolis.
Have you thought of an observation hive

 

[Mike a]

Where is the best place to site an infra red camera internally

It would be worth getting the camera first and seeing what its minimum focal length is if you want to put it into a hive. If it can't focus on objects within 3" to 4" that could cause its own problems.

Floor cam is always interesting but the lens would have all sorts dropped on it blocking the view. Top down cam as suggested could suffer with condensation issues or bees clustering on it blurring the view.

I would dearly love to have a hive cam and a live feed on the net but the wife doesn't want an observation hive in her summer house - office.

 

[grizzly]

I am assuming the cameras will be quality peices of gear as they will be provided by the BBC, meeting a chap this weekend who works for the Natural History Unit, interesting fella and i am really looking forward to seeing how they set all this up.

Not only have i never built a WBC i have not tried to work out the best place for a camera, granted they will have a good idea i expect, but what i dont want to do is restrict the brood area too much or swarm control will be a nightmare.

 

[Mike a]

If they are prepared to compensate you for a replacement brood chamber then drill a suitable sized hole through it and use perspex to stop any bees crawling over the camera lens, but I think you will struggle to fit any reasonable quality camera in a WBC unless its placed looking down into hive. Of course they may turn up with one of those amazing pin hole sized cameras which cost a fortune.