>>Not at all. Charles Babbage essentially invented the computer in
the early 1800s, but it didn't come into common usage until a century
and a half later, when technology advanced enough to make it practical.
I suspect the same will turn out to be true (on a much shorter
timescale!) with electronic hive monitoring.<<
I agree. We've been doing this since 1995, but in a form that was not suitable for the needs of beekeepers - too big, too clumsy, too much power draw, not enough data storage.
Since I was a kid, electric cars were just around the corner. Didn't happen until battery technology caught up. Since I'm 73, that 'just around the corner' took decades. As a survivor of the no speed limit and muscle car era in MT (mine was a 66 GT Mustang with the hi-performance 289 and disk brakes on the front, rather than drums all around - would do 125 mph full out), I have now lived long enough to see an electric pickup being tested - for 2020 we've got two in test mode, Rivian and the Atlas XT. Atlas claims 500 mile range.
Rivian has retrofitted some Ford F-150 with their drive train. Rivian plans to offer 4 battery packs for 230-400 mile range. Four wheel drive, 750 hp, 0-60 in 3 seconds, 100 mph in 10 seconds, 11,000 lb towing. Atlas is slower, but aims for 35,000 pound towing.
Instant torque for both. Rivian essentially has a 200 hp motor mounted to each wheel. Ford has announced plans to deliver it's own electric pickup.
My current pickup is well past 100k miles. Keeping my fingers crossed that my next pickup may be a Rivian or equivalent. As a retiree - 11, 000 pound towing is fine. 0-60 in 3 seconds in a pickup, might as well have fun. 400 miles for daily use is just fine. If I have to do long-hauls - I'll either plan 400 mile breaks or take our other (gas) vehicle.
I digress from the initial comment. From my perspective, electronics in beehives is a disruptive technology. There are three factors posing barriers: (1) Unlike other areas of agriculture like grain crops and dairy, precision agriculture has not become routine. Beekeeping and day to day bee management is still stuck in the mid-1800s. Adoption of major changes in management tools will be slow. There is hope - the cell phone has brought computers into the bee yard. (2) Data-driven bee management requires computers that are small, fast, and inexpensive. That barrier fell when Raspberry Pi and similar, credit-card size, low-power draw, computers came onto the market in 2012. That change spurred growth in the area of development of bee-hive technology, going from about 5 fledgling companies in 2012 to 30 by 2014, and many more these days. (3) Early Smart Phones initially had simple, basic cheap processors and often not much data storage. That changed in 2018 when top-of-the-line cell phones, both Android and iPhone, added facial recognition for security. Facial recognition uses AI. AI generally requires fast processors and relatively large data storage. From our own experience, our acoustic AI systems that took minutes to run dropped to seconds in one year.
Whether we've reached the tipping point for beekeeping, as happened with electric vehicles and batteries, remains to be seen. I hope I live long enough to see it. I also hope I may be one who helps it happen. Jerry
From my perspective,
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