The Production Team reports that the 7 second statement, to which Peter Borst justifiably objected, has been deleted from the video, and the text that Mike also flagged has been modified.  We, the scientists, have put over a decade of work into the underlying science; we have no need to over-sell. 

If you want to know more about the rationale and the  science, go to the May issues of Bee Culture and of ABJ.  I wrote the Bee Culture articles, Malcolm Sanford the ABJ article.   If you don't receive these magazines, drop me and email at [log in to unmask], ask for pdf copies.
You can also listen to a podcast where Jeff and Kim Flottum talk to Dr. David Firth, the Information Technology Specialist on the faculty of U of MT's Business School faculty and myself.  Jeff send me this message a few days ago: Dr Bromenshenk and Dr David Firth are guests on the Beekeeping Today Podcast. It can be found here:  http://tinyurl.com/BTP-026

We know our app works in specific geographical regions, but we also know that bees have accents by region and country, and that  smartphone hardware varies in quality by brand and  model.  We also want to fully automate the reporting and mapping (in near real time) of bee heath issues, whether it's outbreaks of resistant AFB, the seasonal re-appearance of varroa mites and their spread, or any other trackable health issue.  

Our app provides an immediate result in the beeyard  (but accuracy and reliability depends on the tuning).   To accomplish tuning, the app, with the click of one button, sends a complete report with a copy of the sound recording, the initial app diagnostic analysis results, and the beekeeper inspection which  will either confirm or reject each recording/analysis.  All of this information goes to the Cloud, where we can retrieve it and use it to continuously train and refine the AI-powered analyses functions - increasing accuracy and reliability, and we can use the visual inspection reports to immediately enact automate incident reporting and track any spread of a problem, such as mites or nosema or hive beetle or AFB, etc.
We don't propose eliminating the beekeeper, nor visual inspections.  We do propose using the visual inspections for immediate and automated detection and mapping, making public maps of outbreaks, as they occur.  We believe that at some point, we will be able to fully compensate for bee accents and hardware issues, resulting in accuracy and reliability of the app that matches what we have achieved using very high-end equipment.  But we  need the help of experienced beekeepers, such as appear on this list, in order to conduct reliable tuning.  That can only be done by people using the app and sending reports.  We will use the data to refine and train the app in order to realize it's full potential.
To summarize, the Kickstarter funding is needed for the final TUNING of the app and the addition of the automated mapping.   Potentially, every beekeeper in the world could become a part of a reporting system, based on the decoded songs of the bees themselves, with real time (in the beeyard) reports to each beekeeper user and near real-time reporting and mapping of bee health issues.   The vision is to enact a beekeeper driven reporting and mapping that produces results similar to those of the US Center of Disease Controls reporting and mapping of the spread of human diseases such as flu and measles outbreaks.
Whether you do or don't wear a bee suit, do or don't like technology, the objective is data driven bee management and reporting. 

For newbie hobby beekeepers, eliminating the need to suit up, disturb the colony, may well remove a barrier toward regular monitoring of bee health.  

For professional beekeepers, those  of us who seldom wear suits, and especially beekeepers with thousands or tens of thousands of colonies, the result is that anyone with a driver's license could act as a circuit rider, going to bee yards and scanning all of the colonies in a yard, with all of the data from all hives scanned, going back to the field manager/owner, on the same day.  The  following 'crews' wouldn't need to examine a percent of the colonies (due to time constraints) or start with hive 1 and go through all of the hives in each apiary.

Rather, they'd have a list of the colonies that appear to be queen right and healthy and of those that have specific problems, with an indication of the severity of the problem, and identification of any near  dead or dead colonies .   The crews would know before they get to a yard what they need to do, which hives they need to inspect, and they can focus their time and attention on going directly to the hives with obvious or suspected problems.  

We  also realize that the app may find hives where the colonies don't register as normal, but may not register as having  any of the 8 problems we currently include in the app.   Those types of colonies will offer  opportunities to identify new and emerging problems, and the app will provide the means of capturing the colony sounds associated with the problem.
Unlike some other apps that survey bee sounds, our app uses computer pattern-matching, AI-powered software.  The AI's can learn, so the app is trainable.

For example, we currently include AHB in our 8 variables.  We have from Trevor in Australia recordings of A. cerana.  Those bees sound different than AHB and the European Honey Bee.  We've only a few A. cerana recordings, but those are clearly different.   Thus, it should be relatively easy to add A. cerana to the Australian version of the app, we just need to get recordings of 'typical' Australian A. mellifera and of A. cerana, using a smart phone to record  the sounds.  The more recordings of each, the more accurate the discrimination.
As per AHB, we've got recordings for Africanized Honey Bees in US.  But David de Jong in Brazil will be able to send us recording of AHB from point of origin in S. America,   and a couple of our OnLine beekeepers are from S. Africa.  They can provide recordings of authentic African Honey Bees, not the Africanized bees that are found in S. America, and the presumably further  hybridized AHB of southern US.
It's a process, one is which everyone on this list can help.


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