Listening to your bees

[Chris B]

Simon, you are obviously on the inside of this development. Could you please explain to me how is it that government "save the bees" money has been invested in a project that will (possibly) only save beekeeper's time and has been packaged as a commercial product for the benefit of a private company?

It seems to me most hobbyists love to open up their colonies, so a device that renders the beekeeper redundant would only ever be popular as a novelty item. As for commercial beekeepers, each colony has an annual labour budget of less than a day, which includes kit maintenance, harvesting and extracting, feeding and varroa treatments, and moving bees, so at best that leaves 2 hours inspection and swarm control per colony per year. Will the annual ownership cost of the "Arnia" be around the cost of half an hours labour? If not it's not cost effective on a commercial scale. On the other hand if it's cheap and it works call me!

 

[SimonP]

Simon, you are obviously on the inside of this development. Could you please explain to me how is it that government "save the bees" money has been invested in a project that will (possibly) only save beekeeper's time and has been packaged as a commercial product for the benefit of a private company?

The investment in the device is not to support the development of a "novelty item" but to support research into a technology that could help potentially uncover many unknowns about behaviour in the hive. Take CCD for example. No one really knows what is occurring in the hive which facilitates the collapse of the colony. If you take an aircrafts 'black box', it's sole purpose is to record every action taken by the pilot and the system status just before an aircraft crashes. This is no different, it is the black box device for beehives, enabling researchers to identify certain events that may be the trigger that causes a colony to collapse.

Researchers will use it in different ways of course. But what is powerful is if you have many beekeepers using the device on many colonies, interpreting their own data and identifying trends etc that they can share with the beekeeping community. I think this is why money has been invested into the project.

 

[Storm™]

Are you actually Dr Stephen Price - Proof of Concept Manager for Northstar Ventures, the investors in Arnia?

 

[Andy Duff]

When you look inside the hive and see queen cells, it tells that they are going to swarm.

It certainly is about the best indication, but I suppose this thread is all about somebody trying to sell another useless piece of crap to gullible bee keepers who should really know better.

 

[itma]

... I suppose this thread is all about somebody trying to sell another useless piece of crap to gullible bee keepers who should really know better.

Oh, come on, don't hold back!
Tell us what you really think!


I'm sure its only comments like this that have saved the thread from being labelled

 

[Finman]

.

It is same with tethoscope in listening the hive.

- sound .....alive....continue disturbing untill it is dead
- silent ....dead

....sound ....swarming...
.....sound smaller ....swarm has gone
.......no sound ......open the hive


why did you open hive at once....

 

[Andy Duff]

Dear admin I was about to suggest terminating this thread as blatant advertising, I was then about to ask you to remove it before the overwhelming stench of bullshot takes over but do I sense a bloodbath coming on?
please

 

[For want of a better word]

Now I wonder whether the results are better if the hive is located on crossing ley lines???...

RAB


Now for that you need my New and Improved LeyLine Detectex Conglommeratingor Device [ NILDCD]

Lacking massive government backing and University sponsorship.............

I can let you have a couple of bits of bent welding wire and instructions for use in seven different languages, for the price of a bottle of the best single malt!

I hope my new invention the New and Improved LeyLine Detectex Conglommeratingor Device [ NILDCD] is not going to go into the BBKA's dungeon of lost causes along with my other fabulous inventions, The Bee Whistle and Patent Bait Sausage!

 

[For want of a better word]

Dear admin I was about to suggest terminating this thread as blatant advertising, I was then about to ask you to remove it before the overwhelming stench of bullshot takes over but do I sense a bloodbath coming on?
please

Perhaps we should have a refferenduml!

POLL?



Where's me tin hat

 

[Andy Duff]

Now I wonder whether the results are better if the hive is located on crossing ley lines???...

RAB


NO I think this would work better if the device was left on railway lines.

The design team might consider developing left handed hives for us south-paws or a re-capping fork/spoon so we can put honey back if we change our minds.

Angus

 

[Woeski]

Can it get Radio 2?

 

[Woeski]

Can it recognise different dialects? Geordie bees may sound different.

 

[BKF Admin]

Get your popcorn ere..

 

[dpearce4]

Get your popcorn ere..

can i get some honey and nut popcorn please mark?

 

[For want of a better word]

Get your popcorn ere..

I

can tune into the frequency... think your popcorn is about to



SWARM!!!



​

 

[The Riviera Kid]

I went to a talk on this in February presented by scientist Dr Martin Bencsik of Nottingham Trent University.

It was very interesting and the spectral output from hives showed clear patterns that varied depending on time of day, season, swarming and also when the bees were fed in autumn.

Principal component analysis was used to analyse the "conversation" in hives and results were consistent between many hives.

You can read about it here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/nottingham/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_9394000/9394955.stm

 

[Davelin]

I remember my Dad being given an apidictor to test back in the '50s when I was still in short trousers (he was a commercial beekeeper).

My recollection is that after a few months it ended up on a shelf in the bee shed and never came down again.

 

[The Riviera Kid]

Yes, I can understand why. The heart of the talk was based around PCA which, given the quantity of data coming in, could only usefully be performed by a computer. The human ear is unlikely to hear anything of value beyond the basics.

The use of PCA is an established and proven technique in signal processing and the original problem was described analagously as the Cocktail Party Problem.


This article is a bit brief: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_separation

This one is more involved:

http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~jhm/mcdermott_CB_cocktail.pdf

Essentially the mix of "conversations" in a hive are analagous to those at a cocktail party and the science of processing the mixture of acoustic signals appears to work for human and non-human sound sources.