Can the app be used to grade colony strength?
Yes and no.   After we presented our first hand-acoustic scanner in 2012, Arnia quickly added microphones to their scale hives and others followed.   They mainly focused on swarm detection and overall colony condition -big noisy colony versus smaller quieter.  The swarm detection used the warble and frequencies shifts described decades ago by Eddie Woods.  Others rapidly followed Arnia's lead.  Overall colony noise has some use - alive versus dead, active versus 'not-so-much', foraging (yes/no).  But accurate frame counts, only if lots of external factors are the same.
Overall colony size can work if one compares sonograms of side-by-side colonies, on the same day and time, under stable weather conditions.  As a relative comparison it works. 

That comparison tends to fail when one tries to compare bees in different types of hives, at different times of day, in different seasons.   Healthy colonies can be nearly silent in the  middle of a cool night or under a snow bank in winter.  All colonies become noisy when they are flying/foraging.  There are a few who have used flight sounds to assess colony foraging activity.
For assessing overall colony size, I recommend using  a high resolution IR camera middle of night or at dawn for accuracy.  Image two aspects of the hive, e.g., front and top, or back and top, or front and side, or back and side.   You need two aspects - if you image the front and the cluster is near the back of the hive, you may under-estimate it.  Colonies in sheds - this is a problem, strong colonies hanging back may go unnoticed.  Weak colonies plastered to the  front may seem stronger than they are.




 


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