I have a cousin who has an electrical engineering Ph.D. degree and works in
research and design of signal processing equipment for a major computer/
semiconductor company.  I forwarded him some of the posts from Rex Boys about
the Apidictor and here was his response:

"This concept is fascinating and could be accomplished quite easily. I think
the way to do it would be to fit the device to the hive and calibrate it on
normal activity. (Of course, the calibration would be off if the bees were
preparing to swarm when the device was first installed.) Then the sensor
could look for activity that was significantly outside the norm.

I think a simple semiconductor-based system could be developed to do this
rather inexpensively. However, no one will ever go to the trouble unless
there is a rather large market. Of course, the business people would want to
know how many hives there are in the world, and how many of them would
be likely to insert such a device at what cost points.

Right now, using the parts that are currently available it might take about
$10 or so to build a device like this. But $1 or $2 (maybe less) is probably
achievable with some development effort. Of course, it would need to be
studied carefully to say for sure."


I thought these comments would be of interest to this list.  It seems to me
like this might be something worth pursuing.  And I was just thinking that his
company might be willing to pick this up as a project if there is an incentive
to do so.  Any thoughts?

Layne Westover
College Station, Texas, USA