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Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:02:03 EDT |
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Ted
I'm not aware of an electronic scale hive under a CCD colony.
We did manage to get a bi-directional bee counter on the entrance of one.
Our counter consists of a row of portals, each portal has two Infra-red
detectors under a clear floor, an IR emitter in the roof). The counter queries the
detectors 200x per second. The software notes which detector is blocked and
in what order, for each of the 16 portals. The portals (small tunnels) are
just wide enough for a single bee to pass at a time.
We've run these counters for more than a decade. They are very reliable and
VERY accurate. A healthy colony generally sees 94-96% return for any given
day. The small percentage loss is from bees that drift, get lost, or die in
the field. We've seen colonies with 98% return rates. Some exceed 100% due
to drift.
Amazingly, some colonies recorded over 0.5 M flights per day. Quarter
million is fairly common.
Biggest problem with CCD - you don't know which colony is going to get it.
IF we did, it would be easy to rig them up with counters.
Note, a scale only gives you weight changes. The counters give you the
numbers of bees exiting and entering the colony for every minute of the day/night.
Jerry
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