Hi:
 
I have some technical questions:
 
1) Plastic pollen trap inserts
 
In the early 80's we came across pollen trap inserts made of perforated
plastic. They were produced in Europe..  I have not seen any of these
inserts in our part of the U.S. in recent years, nor have I found them in any catalogues.
 
We have built our own plastic inserts, but would rather purchase them.  I
need 15 inserts for immediate use in some of our specialized research hives.  I can not use
metal screens - we are testing for metals in the pollen and the standard metal screens used
in U.S. pollen traps can add zinc to the pollen.
 
2)  Bee counters
 
We are testing various counters to determine the number of bees coming
and going from the hive.  We tried and rejected laser diodes when some of
the parts were discontinued.  Infra-red counters seem ok, and we have seen
some articles on building these, but the counters were not set up to deal
with large numbers of bees coming and going.  Probably the
state-of-the-art lies with a very expensive system being used in the U.S.
for which the circuit diagrams are not being released.
 
So, three issues:
 
a) Does anyone have a reference to a counting system that provides the
ability to count large numbers of individuals, reliably, cheaply?  You
will probably come up with the same articles that we did, but sometimes
we miss one, especially in the European and Asian journals.
 
b) Are there any other kinds of detection systems (e.g.,
micro-switches).  We do not want to tag the bees, we need to count all
incoming and outgoing bees from colonies containing 10k to 30k of bees -
and we need to do this for 30 hives!
 
c) Does anyone have a nifty way of directing incoming bees through one
set of counters and outgoing bees through another?  We have tried funnels
and directional air flows (bees don't like walking or flying into stiff
breezes)
 
 
All of the data is directed through A-bus cards into a 66 MHz, 486 DX
notebook computer with 8 Mg memory and 520 Mg hard disk, with a 700 Mg
Tape Backup system. The notebook currently logs hive temperatures, RH,
hive weights, and a full array of weather variables.  Air flow, speed,
and direction (to assess fanning activity) will be added in the near
future (using sensors that have been employed for a long time at UM to
assess air flow).
 
The computer also has an audio card and we will record acoustic emissions.
 
If anyone has any other parameters that can be measured continuously,
please let us know.  We can accept several hundred input lines.
 
Address your comments to me directly so as to not tie up the net with
technical discussions that are probably of interest to only a small group
of subscribers.
 
Thanks
 
Jerry Bromenshenk
The University of MT
Missoula, MT  59812-1002
Tel:  406-243-5648
Fax:  406-243-4184
E-Mail [log in to unmask]