I thought I'd share this info with the group. I've had a Broodminder Bluetooth hive monitoring system installed on one of my artificial swarm splits (discussed here and elsewhere) for the last week or so and it's interesting to see how the split colony (older queen with young brood and nurse & house bees) has been doing. I have wanted to see this system for a couple years but was too cheep to buy one (approx. $200) myself so my family got me one for my birthday! It's been interesting to watch! Here's some of the data.

The first graphs show outside temp (28 Low - 62 High deg) and hive weight (108 - 109 lbs) over the last few days. We've had some cold nights lately and I've seen a few brood tossed out onto the entrance by housekeeping bees because they were either mite infested or because the bees contracted the cluster at night to stay warm and couldn't cover all the brood thus killing a few brood. I'm going to be watching for the hive weight to start to rise for placing on stickies (honey supers). 

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The second grafts show temp and humidity in the frame 5/6 position between the bottom beep and upper medium brood boxes. You can see the steady temp around 91 deg over the top of the brood while humidity ranges from about 27 - 58%. It's really interesting to see this steady temp even when the outside temp fell to 27 deg on the 1st. The bees were really working hard to keep warm that night! The humidity is really variable based upon activity in the brood nest. I did have the gauge in the frame 8/9 position because of a MAQS placement and the temp/humidity values were variable being near the wall of the hive. Then the temp ranged from about 45 low - 65 high deg and humidity was 40 - 65%. You can also see that the humidity inside the hive increased about 20% in the last couple days, most likely due to the rain.

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The final two graphs show temp and humidity at the top of the hive in my screened top box. Again variable temp (50 low - 70 high deg) and humidity (50 - 80%). This higher humidity (always when the temp drops at night) at the top of the hive makes sense as the warm air inside the hive rises and escapes through the top vents. The thing I don't want to see is that humidity get to 100% and start getting condensation inside the hive where it can drop onto the bees or cause mold to form!

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So there it is! Really interesting to me as it helps me understand better what's going on inside my colonies!
Scott Ball
Livermore, CA
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