At 07:29 AM 1/12/00 -0500, you wrote:


Raymond, if you can produce a unit with all of the devices that you
mentioned for $50, let's do it.  Part of this may be semantics.  My $500
unit would be a monitoring hive in a yard with the central communications,
etc. that you suggested would be a standalone to support the distributed
hive.  If we break it out to a simple hive monitor communicating with a
central weather/communications uplink, then your estimate is much closer to
reality.

Also, my system price includes a stand, etc.  Unless you have some really
cut rate supplier, the box itself adds a few dollars.  And I haven't found
a really cheap satellite or land-based communications system that won't add
significant dollars per month.

As per prices, they do keep dropping and the capability keeps increasing
rapidly.  A monitoring hive at $500 would not be cost effective for a
hobbiest (and maybe not even the $50 hive) or for a commercial beekeeper in
a densely populated state (where the number of hives in a commercial
operation and their distribution - miles apart- may be small)by comparison
to commercial beekeeping in some other states.  However, there is another
cost facter that large operations have to consider - labor and mileage.
Our smallest operations have 2500 to 3000 hives, often in two states at the
same time, such as CA and WA, WA and MT, MT and the Dakotas.  Bee
operations in MT often are spread over 100 or more even several hundred
miles.  I know of one operation that extends from the central part of
eastern MT deep into N. Dakota.

At this point in time, the hives are tended on a rotational schedule.  The
ones to do today are usually the next in the list.  Sometimes, based on
prior history, the beekeeper will now that the bees in a specific area will
have to be checked out-of-order because the nectar flow tends to start
earlier there  -  or the area may tend to be marginal in food resources at
critical times.  More than once, our guys have grumbled that in the race
between managing bees, time, weather, equipment  they went to one end of
the operation when it was the other that needed tending.  In our part of
the world 50 and sometimes 100 hive yards are common.  Imagine the cost of
either starving out one or more yards, or arriving some days after the
nectar flow has started.  Multiply the loss by multiple hives, and maybe a
monitor hive at a key yard in the area would pay for itself.  Granted, a
cheap monitor under every hive would be great, but 1 in a group of yards
100 miles from home base might be very useful.

Comments?  And if you can really produce a $50 monitor that counts bees,
weighs hives, communicates etc. - let me know and we will RUN to our sponsors.

Cheers

Jerry


>


>I know that you have had it for years and I have really enjoyed reading
>about it but your goal of $500 per unit is too high.

>I have designed boards with a simple computer processor/controller where the
>sell price was under $50.  We had material costs of under $20
>
>It is not easy migrating something from a lab curiosity to a consumer item.
Jerry J. Bromenshenk, Ph.D.
Director, DOE/EPSCoR & Montana Organization for Research in Energy
The University of Montana-Missoula
Missoula, MT  59812-1002
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel:  406-243-5648
Fax:  406-243-4184
http://www.umt.edu/biology/more
http://www.umt.edu/biology/bees