# Spying on the bees



## Wavertree (Dec 1, 2013)

My mentor is an engineer with a big and curious brain.

He has wired up his hives with temperature sensors to track the difference between the inside of the hive and the climate outside. Next year we plan to wire up hives and compare different wrapping methods.

Today it was a blistering -23.4 *C outside in the bee yard. The air space around the cluster was 17.7*C. Deep inside the bee ball it will be even warmer. It is supposed to warm up this weekend and then plunge down again next week. Hopefully the bees will be able to move around a bit and reach new stores of food.

There are 24 sensors placed in a 5 by 5 pattern. They are located 3 inches from the bottom board. 
I plan to wire my hives up as input for part of a weather station. I'd like to add a way to measure moisture as well.


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## TxGypsy (Nov 23, 2006)

Hmmm, this gets me to thinking. Wonder how hard it would be to rig up one of those micro cameras in a hive?


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## Bret (Oct 3, 2003)

Fun, a helmet cam on the queen. I just invented the drone drone here and now. (two drone intended.)

Glad that you have bee mentor.


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## Wavertree (Dec 1, 2013)

My mentor is a weather geek just like me so this has been a fun project to play around with so far.

The sensors were purchased online and cost about $1 each. There are 24 in the hive, between the frames. One is located in the airspace above the inner cover and one is external.
The whole shebang is wired together and run thru a network cable to the house. It runs thru a converter and into an old laptop running Linux Mint. The software is open source and is called DigiTemp. Pretty uncomplicated stuff.
It can be set to poll as often as you want it done.

Bees are fascinating things any time of year


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