Randy
<8 hives being monitored in four different almond orchards.>
I've tried for years to convince EPA of the value of bee flight counters. In Dulles a few years ago, I was told by an EPA representative that counters restrict bee flight - based on what, I don't know. We successfully used 27 bi-directional counters for over 5 years on hives on DOD Hazardous Waste sites.
I also had three of the original counters out of Belgium. All worked very well. There was a group on the east coast promoting counters with 2-3 entry portals as 'research counters'. Maybe that's what EPA saw - too few entry points on a entrance mounted bee-counter is the same as too few runways on an airport.
DARPA insisted on us calibrating our counters. We bought the Belgium ones to compare to ours, and we video-taped bees coming and going through the counters and did visual video frame counts to assess the accuracy of the counters. One thing that we learned early on - if the entry passages ways are narrow, the bees may balk - start to go through, bump the sides, back up. We developed and patented circuitry and software that only counts bees making a complete pass in or out. We also found on cool nights that the guard bees like to site in the 'warm' passageways.
My request to you - (1) Film bees coming and going to address the perception that counters are 'inaccurate' - that was the main DARPA concern, and (2) Film hives with counters and hives without counters and compare flight activity - or maybe better, film bees from a hive on alternate days with and without counters to address the EPA contention that bee flight is altered, or that the bees go to hives without counters.
Considering that # of bees foraging is a critical metric for pollination efficacy, EPA's focus on weighing hives (a highly variable factor) instead of looking at actual foraging has always been puzzling to me.
Finally, Michelle Taylors thesis research dosed colonies with malathion (back in the Med-Fly spray days) and compared the exposure effects as measured by dead bee traps with bi-directional bee counter data from same set of hives. The counters were far more infomative, showing responses as they occurred.
Good luck with your counters.
Finally, as per filming, our go to choice these days are relatively inexpensive Go Pros - don't filming continuously, use the frame interval function - e.g., one photo every 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds - whatever works best for the trials. Jerry
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