Thanks to Professor Bromenshenk  for the great explination!   We have talked a bit,  but so far  not moved ahead.   Kelton Tembly and I have also talked a bit,  as well as a friend who does visual inspect ion work for Manufacturing.   Actualy this has the biggest potential for real world use.  Amazing how well a computer  with some programming can do it.   The issue is mostly 2 fold  Lighting,  which canbe managed with a tunnel,  and bigger yet is power supply.

That system is also not super cheap,  and requires programming, beyond my skill set right now,  and not quite that curios yet.


Randy's right,  it does warrant some work.  AS a slightly migratory beek, anything that can be done to reduce travel losses would be great.

My current hypothesis is very simple,  the 2 feet or 2 mile rule is  an illusion.  I suspect at long distances the bees are so completely lost  the beekeeper just never sees them,  so he thinks its all good. The old If a tree falls principle.

I base this on the observation and the setback hives always seem to suffer.  One would expect if it were not true,  moving to a new and better forage would be a big boone.  Very seldom see that short term at all.


I believe that older foragers never do re orient themselves.  There may be some ways to make it happen or reduce it.  But right now as a pollinator we spend a lot of nighttime hours moving bees to reduce losses.  I suspect we could just as well sleep in.  But hope some tricks like wetting hives or switching entrances might help.

Towards that we know the precocious   recruitment occurs,  but how fast??  When does that happen and at what scale?  To determine that  the counters we use have to be able to tell direction,  to determine what the actual increase of non returning bees is or is not immediately after a move. ?  add to that the need IMO to use full size hives,  and try several move techniques,  and have a decent number of hives for both baseline and comparative numbers  and the project got sizeable quickly.

Power supply is the other issue,  I suppose I could arrange several yards close to power and wifi,  but that’s harder than one would think here in the sticks!  


Its on the list to do though.

Bill asked a while back the serious question,  "why not run the test yourself?"    excellent idea,  and for some I do.  But I find 2 problems,  first,  many are like Pete,  and if you're not some "accredited" research,  don’t give any credence to the work, and secondly I have zero interest in publishing and promotion.  Randy does a lot of that,  and a huge amount of thanks and respect,  but not something I have any real interest in right now,  So the test I do are for myself and my curiosity,  and  not much more.

That said,  professor Bromenshenk is pushing me a bit on a different test we are doing,  and if the results are worthy,  I guess we will write it up! (can you sense the enthusiasm for that task?)

Charles

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