Here's an old post from merely 20 years ago:

Fri, 5 Mar 1999 16:58:37 EST
Great news for those interested in the Woods Apidictor  ...
... the machine is now virtually foolproof ...
The bad news is that the letter is dated 28th June 1965.

Rex Boys was mentioned; in 1999 he wrote:

Eddie always emphasised that the maximum benefit occurred in commercial apiaries where time is money. In
the swanning season, all hives had to be inspected every 9 days, each inspection taking 5 -10 minutes and 95%
of them proving negative. An apidictor test took 10 seconds and only one in ten indicated the need to do a full
brood inspection. Hence the work load was reduced to 10% of what it had been. We now live in a more
technically minded age, components are really tiny and it is probable that a modem version of the Apidictor
would be even smaller, cheaper and more acceptable to the beekeeper. Indeed, I can visualise a future in which
each hive has its own miniaturised apidictor which generates an alarm, transmitted back to base by radio when
the warble has built up to the appropriate level!

further discussion ensued:

Instead of sweating and squashing bees, one could sit in air-conditioned
comfort and sip a drink of one's choosing while the computer did the work.

¶

2019
I am wondering if there is anyone out there that has found any sort of electronic hive monitoring to be useful. One might think that an idea that has been around for 70 years would have either borne fruit or died.

 

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