All

I will be presenting at the California beekeepers meeting.  We've finally
got some possible solutions to the beehive thefts that first showed up in
California, and have now migrated to remote beeyards in Montana.

We don't have a perfect solution, but we have two options that I will be
describing:

1) Hive Marker -- a very small radio-frequency identification tag on a
plastic film.  Many of you have seen these (I've shown them at meetings
over the past two years), but the price has finally come down considerably.

Advantage -- easy to hide, inexpensive, nothing to wear out (no battery),
with a read range of a few feet.

Disadvantage -- read range of a few feet is far better than inches, but not
sufficient to find 'stolen' hives.

If your hives are stolen and recovered, you have positive identification of
your property.

2) Hive Tracker -- a breakthrough in terms of price and range.  This is a
1x1.5x1/4 inch capsule.  It has a radio frequency tag with a beacon.  The
tag broadcasts its identification code every 12 seconds for 4 years
(estimated battery life).  If it is moved, the tag switches to broadcasting
its ID every 2 seconds.

Replacement batteries are under 35 cents.

Advantage -- long range (1000 ft is easy, up to 1/2 mile under ideal
conditions)
Disadvantage -- more expensive, best suited for marking pallets.

A basic reader can pick up 200 tags, and read everyone of the tags in 10
seconds, at 300 ft.  Again, each tag has a unique ID, so one can identify
the beekeeper (owner) and hive (number) from each tag.

With add-on antennas, we've attained a read range of 1000 ft to 1/2
mile.  Last week, we located a tag in a refrigerator in a house 1200 ft away.

The Hive Tracker system gives you some options -- flying over highways,
groves and searching for 'lost' hives.
Monitoring chokepoints -- border crossings

Both of these are available today.

The third option is to have a reader in a yard, call home when hives
move.  We're rushing to add that functionality, but we're not quite there.

These tags aren't cheap when compared to the Hive Marker tags, but the
price looks a lot better when you figure in the 4 year life.   To protect a
pallet of six hives for 4 years would be about $1.70 per hive.  If a new
battery gave you another 2 years (at 35 cents), price would drop to $1.12
per hive.

I'll have the system at Lake Tahoe for those who are interested.

Jerry

I also will be presenting a business/research leveraging opportunity.  I
can get approximately 1/4 million in match for research, if some other
business or group buys into this system.  That would go a long ways toward
achieving the 'call home' capability.

Eventually, we see these tags as part of a distance management system for
commercial beekeepers.

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