We have tested for negative effects of fields, etc.  I'm not at liberty to
say how the antennae would be made, but it is small and bonded to the bee -
the technology has been tested, and it doesn't involve glue and doesn't
hurt the bee.

The goal is a 1 mg tag+antennae, about the thickness of a piece of foil.

But, as many point out, the development cost is prohibitive at this time.
Again, we are looking at a product for folks with 1,000-15,000 hives where
finding the queen is only part of the equation - the objective is to be
able to capture records to fine tune production, queen selection,
inventory, etc.

For 1-2 hives, or even thousands, if all you want to do is ping the queen,
then the metal detector approach may be fine- but I suspect sensitivity
will be a challenge.  Any metal detector sensitive enough to pick up metal
in paint will ping on every nail in the box and anything on the beekeepers.
 Need very fine tuning - let me know if you can fine tune to this degree,
we may have a project.

Thanks

Jerry


Jerry J. Bromenshenk
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http://www.umt.edu/biology/bees