Let's not stop progress in beekeeping tools with Langstroth, Quinby and Hruschka - they all worked ~150 years ago. Not every crowd-funded invention will succeed (FlowHive?), but even those that fail can lay ground for further progress. I only suggested correlation with weather - I have no idea what others could use this data for, but I'd be very surprised if absolutely no one took advantage of it. It reports weight, outside temperature & humidity, inside temperature & humidity over the first brood box, plus inside temperature above the second brood box. Not a bad set of data to play with...

Progress in miniaturization and device inter-connectivity is astounding - would we have ever expected a fingerprint scanner and an accelerometer packed in a device that fits in a shirt front pocket (your smartphone)? Wouldn't that be so outrageous for someone to build up on this 10,000 army of "citizen scientists" (why 10,000 only? why not 50,000?) and add additional devices? Perhaps a miniaturized air pollution sampler or a pollen detector/identifier when such devices become available?

The Broodminder idea is simple, well-executed (the app itself is simplicity incarnate - two big buttons to push to sync the data and to upload it to the cloud and you're done) and most importantly it offers free access to this data. It doesn't promise honey on tap, or that you don't have to look into your hive any more. But it gives an additional view into what's going on in a given location. I think such efforts should be applauded and encouraged, even if they are not yet the silver bullet you're looking for in bee research.

Przemek

P.S.
You were right - when I expanded the graph to just 24h it clearly showed slow weight drop throughout the night (evaporation), followed by a quick ~2 lb drop at sunrise (foragers leaving), to be followed a few hours later with a slow steady climb up as the foragers returned with loads. No overall gain, nor loss, so not bad for this time of the year in NY.

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