2015-12-08: BroodMinder Has Arrived

I'm very excited to say that my electronic hive temperature and humidity monitoring devices, aka the BroodMinder, have arrived!  If you've been reading this blog you know that I've been playing around with my own electronic hive monitoring electronics using an Arduino.  Although it worked, I couldn't really find a good way of deploying it and keeping it powered.  Well, some very talented people have done a lot more (and better) thinking about this and have made it a reality.  The weather is looking good this weekend and hopefully I will have them installed!


You can read all about how they work in the link to their Indiegogo page above, but basically you place the device right below your inner cover (above the brood) and using low power blue tooth it transmits the data to an app on your smart phone.  Pretty sweet!

BroodMinders ready to go!

I bought three of them and plan to place them on the cutout hive, the split (combined) hive and either the Green or White hive.  They both have the same number of boxes but one has an Italian queen and the other has the queen I bought from the Northern Bee Network.  I guess you'll find out which one I decided on after I deploy them.

The App

Hopefully these little gems will help me to monitor the hives over the winter without opening them. 


Until next time, thanks for reading!

2015-06-14: First Week of Arduino Data

I walked out to Green Hive on Sunday in between rain storms.  I popped the lid, pulled the SD card walked it into the house and downloaded the data.  A quick return trip to the hive and I placed the card back into the Arduino and hit the reset button.

My main purpose in making the Arduino solar powered is to see if it will be able to run continuously.  So, I'm looking for gaps in the data or any other unusual behaviors.

Here is a link to the Excel spreadsheet with the data
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwe1ciSmfhhsYVpZNmlxME53UTQ/view?usp=sharing

First thing to highlight is that I set up the Arduino on June 6 and it ran until June 12.  I pulled the memory card on June 14.  It was cloudy and rainy during the week.  So, once the battery dropped below a certain voltage, it could no longer power the Arduino.  I'm curious if the solar panel will be able to charge the battery back up while the Arduino is still drawing power from the battery.  And if so, how many full sun days would that require?

According to the specs on the panel, it outputs 330 mAh @ 6v. 
http://www.adafruit.com/products/200?gclid=CLjRseunlMYCFZYXHwodbbsAcQ

The battery has a 2000 mAh capacity so by my horrible math skills, it would take right around 6 hours to fully charge the battery.  Of course, that is in full sun and without a power hungry Arduino stealing energy from it!

The second thing to highlight is that I think one of the sensors is not measuring very well.  The external sensor seems to measure outside of the norm.  I pulled some historic data from weather underground and plotted their recorded high and low for temp and humidity as a base line.  The data often has some wild swings above and below those values.  The sensors I'm using are not meant for outdoor use, so I protected the external sensor with a plastic cup with a few small vent holes drilled in the side.  I also knew it might be sitting the sun so I painted it white to hopefully mitigate that temperature swing.

So either my protective housing is backfiring on me and trapping humidity or the sensor is not working well.  At this point I'm guessing it is the former.  If you look at the chart you can see the humidity spike to 100% almost every single day.  Maybe there is even condensation forming on the sensor.  I may have to look at something like this https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11050 to get some better readings.

It has been a fun project that has made me learn a lot.  I'd really love to be able to measure the hive weight and maybe even noise frequency!  Maybe some day.

As always, thanks for reading!

2015-06-06: Movin' on up!

...not to the East side, but to another box on the hives!  =)  If you're old like me then you probably get the quote.  Otherwise you'll just have to Google it.

The big accomplishment during this inspection was putting the second box on each hive and deploying my solar powered Arduino.  As you can see in the picture below, my deployment consists of a mesh lined ventilation board that I built.  The Arduino Uno sits nicely bridged to a small breadboard that all three DHT-22 temp/humidity sensors are attached to.  One sensor sits next to the Arduino, another runs outside the hive to measure ambient temperature and the last one runs down under the Arduino into the brood nest.  The other components here are a 2000 mAh LiPo battery, a Sunny Buddy solar charger controller from SparkFun and a 5v boost up converter that takes the 3.7v from the battery and pumps it up to 5.2v that feeds the USB connection to the Arduino.  Sitting on top of the Arduino is a data collection shield that has a Real Time Clock and an SD card reader.

Arduino Deployment

I'm really hopeful that the battery/solar combo will actually last more than a few days (unlike the 6 AA battery pack that I tried before).  I plan to walk out the the hive this weekend with my laptop and pull the SD card and download the data.

Green and White Hives: 

Since both hives seem to have good queens and have used about 80% of the frames, it is time to add the second box.  You can really see the evidence of the increase in hive population.  Bees are covering most of the frames with very solid frames of brood.

I chose to deal with two issues at once when I added the second boxes.  Many of the frames of honey from the hive that died last year were very "wonky".  There were large lobes of honey that stuck out so far from the side of the frame that another frame couldn't fit next to it in the proper bee space.  So as I added these frames to the new box, I took my uncapping knife and shaved them down flat.  I fed a few empty frames in between so it should give the bees a good guide to build straight combs.  Plus all that open honey should give plenty of fuel for the bees to build new wax.

The added box was especially helpful to White Hive since that is the hive that has the Honey Super Cell plastic frames in it.  Since the bees cannot make drone cells on the fully drawn plastic, they build drone cells on the bottom of the frames.  These cells tend to tear open when you do an inspection so you loose some drone larva in the process.  The good thing about this is that I did not notice any varroa mites on the open drone larva!  That is typically where the mites would be so maybe the mite numbers are really low so far.

New boxes going on

After I added the boxes, I put the Arduino board on top and plugged it into the solar panel.  All systems Go!

Deployment complete

Next steps:

As I mentioned, I will be pulling the first week of Arduino data this weekend.  After the bees have established themselves in the second box I will be gearing up to do two splits.  I really want to increase my genetic diversity this year.  I may sacrifice any honey production this year by doing these splits but I'm hoping to actually have a few hives survive the winter this time!

Until next time, thanks for reading!

First Full Inspection: 2015-05-13

The 2015 Beekeeping season is now officially in full swing!  I've done my first complete inspection of both hives and things are looking good so far.

White and Green Hives.  Life long buddies.

White Hive:

Upon opening the hive up, the first thing I found was that instead of hanging out in the middle of the hive, they've chosen one side over the other.  It must smell better over there or maybe there was more honey and pollen left on those frames from last year?

The Left side is where the cool kids hang out

Anyway, it made it easy to figure out which side to start my inspection on.  So I pulled out the frames on the empty side and quickly worked my way toward the middle.  On frame 6 I found a nice frame of fresh, colorful pollen.

Pollen

Some pretty typical orange and yellow colors for this time of year.  I was hoping that the bees would have a chance of gathering some steel blue colored pollen from the Siberian Squill I planted but the blooms were already spent by the time the bees arrived.  Maybe next year.

Moving on to frame 7 I spotted the first frame of capped brood.

Future baby bees

It has only been about 14 days since the bees were installed and usually it takes a few days for the queen to be released from her cage, and then maybe a few more days before she even starts laying eggs.  The eggs hatch into larvae and then the cell is sealed on day 9.  So, I'm guessing these cells have only been capped for a few days at most.  If that means the eggs were laid 12 days ago, then in 9 more days they will start hatching.  Then we'll get to see what this queen's genetics are going to look like.  This hive has been a bit more "touchy" than the Green Hive so far.  Hopefully when the new bees take over they will have a little calmer disposition.



Green Hive:

I love the look of new comb on foundationless frames!  Green Hive did not disappoint me either.

New comb being formed

It is fascinating to watch as the bees drawn down a sheet of hexagons on the frame.  The new wax is a nice pale yellow color and it is just waiting to store something!

Well, this queen has been filling the frames with brood.

Pretty solid brood

Sometimes new queen have a very spotty brood pattern when they first start.  This frame looks pretty good to me.  You can also see that there is a cluster of drone brood along the bottom of this frame.  Right before I took this picture the bees were doing there job, covering the frame and keeping the brood warm.  If you blow on them, they don't like it and they move out of the way rather quickly.  I think it has something to do with the CO2 that we exhale.

A few frames over I was able to grab a nice close up of the developing larva.

"C" shaped larva

Notice the different sizes of the larva.  The queen usually lays her eggs in a circular spiral pattern.  So the larva in the center of the frame are bigger (older) and the ones toward the outside edge are smaller.  If you zoom in really close on this photo you can even see the eggs to the right of the smallest larva.

I'm really glad to see both hives getting off to a really good start so far in 2015!

Next Steps:

I have completed my solar Arduino setup and I plan on deploying that again soon.  I also plan on taking some of the remaining honey frames from the hive that died this past winter and feeding it back to the bees.

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Hive Autopsy : 2015-04-12

When the weather finally started turning to above freezing temps back in mid-March, I started to get really excited thinking my bees had made it through the winter.  Sadly, about the same time I stopped noticing any audible response from the hive when I would knock on it.  The day the temp hit 60 degrees I couldn't wait any longer and I popped open the lid to take a look.  A few dead stray bees were in the top box but none of the honey had been touched.  This was not too surprising since the hive was four deep boxes tall.  The next box was also full of honey and no bees.  In the next box down I found the dead cluster on about 5 frames.  Dang.  This past weekend I finally had a chance to bring the hive into the pole barn and take it apart to do an autopsy.

This was a very depressing task but if I am making mistakes I want to learn from them!  Usually a hive dies because either they starved to death, they froze to death (these two are often connected), or they had some sort of disease or queenless problem.  Here is what I found:

First off, I noticed that the dead bees on the bottom board were mostly on the left hand side.

Dead bees on the bottom board

Usually they cluster in the middle of the box but for whatever reason they favored the left hand side.  The top of the picture shown here is facing the North, so bees started on the West (left) side of the box (frame 1).  I'm not really sure if that evidence is of any note.  The lack of dead bees on the bottom of this picture is because that is where the hive entrance was located and I had been cleaning the dead bees out of the entrance every week.

After looking over a few of the frames I could see they were mostly devoid of honey.

There was a tiny bit of honey on the top of the first frame, but the rest were empty.

The size of the cluster looked pretty large to me so I think they had plenty of bees to generate enough heat to stay alive.

On the fourth frame I noticed a small patch of brood.

You can see about eight capped brood cells amongst the dead and moldy bees with their heads down in the cells.

The other side of of this frame had even more capped brood cells.

Not a drop of honey on these frames until frame 8, 9 and 10.

These frames were solid honey.

With no honey left on the frames that the cluster was on and also that there were brood on those frames, I would say that the cluster was unable to move to the honey next to them.  Essentially they starved/froze to death.  In a sad twist, I'm wondering if there weren't TOO MANY bees in the hive! 

<sigh>

Well, on a more positive note, I had ordered two more packages of bees that are scheduled to arrive on April 26.  Also, the Siberian Squill that I planted in the Fall for the bees is up!

I have also been working on my solar powered Arduino hive monitor and I have it working.  I need to build a stand of some sort for the solar panel and set it up out in the bee yard. 

Another one of my goals this year is to introduce some Michigan survivor stock genetics into my apiary.  I've been in contact with Northern Bee Network and I plan to order some queens once my new bees are established.

Thank goodness for the renewal of Spring!!  As always, thanks for reading.

Winer Prep: 2014-11-28

I'm trying a few new things to prepare the hive for Winter this year.  Ideally I would have two hives of similar strength and try something new on one hive and not the other.  Then I could compare the results in the Spring and see if it made any difference.  Not exactly a complete scientific study, but it would be a start.  Alas, I only have the combined Green/White hive to overwinter this year, so it is all or nothing. 

The first thing I am trying is adding wood shavings to the ventilation board on top of the hive. 

Vent board.  Notice the propolis on the edges and center of the screen

During the Winter, the bees generate heat to keep the cluster warm.  That warm, moist air rises in the hive and when it hits the inner cover can possible condense.  This water can eventually build up and drip back down on the bees.  Not good.  Bees don't have too much trouble handling the cold.  But if they are cold AND wet, it is a death sentence.  So, the idea is that the warm moist air rises up through the hole in the inner cover and then through the wood shavings in the ventilation board.  If it does condense at all, the wood shavings absorb the moisture and it cannot drip back down on the bees.  I think the loose wood shavings also allow for some air circulation from the bottom of the hive without creating some sort of wind tunnel.

Wood shavings added

The second thing I am trying is using a Winter wrap on the hive. 

I put velcro on the wraps to attach them

In the past I used a wind break to keep most of the wind chill off the hives.  They were big, bulky and heavy sheets of plywood that I would stake into the ground.  I would then have to put braces on them so they wouldn't blow over.  Way too much of a pain.  My thought on the Winter wrap is that it would serve the same purpose as a wind break and be much easier to use and store.  From all that I have read, the opinions really go back and forth on the benefit of using them.  They do help to block the wind for sure but they also may block the solar radiation on a nice sunny day from warming the hive.  Even though they are made of black plastic that would absorb some sun, there is a very thin layer of foam on the back side of the plastic.  I think that would prevent the warmth from actually reaching the hive.  Any heat transfer experts out there that can weigh in on this?  I know of others who staple black tar paper directly to their hives.  That may actually allow the heat to transfer into the hive enough for the bees to move around and get to other sources of honey.  I really wish I had my Arduino hive monitor running so I could see the temp difference from outside and inside the hive on a sunny day!  Maybe next year.

All tucked in for Winter

The last thing I did (which is no different than previous years) is to take the entrance reducer off and put the mouse guard on.

I have also gone out to the hive about once a week and used my J-Hook style hive tool to scoop out the dead bees from the bottom of the hive. 

Bring out yer dead!  (And look out for the 1 attack bee)

You don't want so many dead bees to build up on the bottom that they can no longer get out of the hive.  What has really amazed me is that I am still seeing drones!!  I really thought that every last drone would have been expelled from the hive two months ago!

So far, December has been mild.  Cold, but not horrible.  The end of this week is suppose to reach 40 degrees F.  I'll take it!  All I can really hope for is that this Winter isn't as bad as last Winter.  Waiting is the hardest part  =)

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Second Inspection: 2014-06-10

I was very eager to complete this second inspection for a few reasons.  First, I was very eager to retrieve my fist set of Arduino Smart Hive data!  Second, the hives are currently at Installation +30 days (Bee Math) and there should be many more young bees in the hive.  Not only will these bees be nurses for the next generation, but they will also be wax comb builders (Honey Bee Worker Jobs).  So, they should be expanding the nest area and allowing more bees to forage for nectar and pollen.  The increasing number of bees also means they will be running out of space soon.  Normally in nature, the size of the cavity the bees live in does not increase and when they run out of room they swarm.  Part of being a beekeeper is controlling the bee's swarming nature by adding more space (boxes) and I needed to see if it was time to add another box or not.  If your hive does swarm you've lost probably half of your bees and your old queen.  Not a good thing if you actually want any honey.  Plus most of your neighbors probably wouldn't appreciate a swarm of bees landing in their yard!  Well, onto the inspections...

Green Hive:

I opened the lid and found that my ventilation board with my electronics in it was nicely stuck to the top of the lid.  There must have been some propolis left on the underside of the lid and it works really nicely as glue.  I spent a few minutes trying to remove the ventilation form and when I finally removed it, I notice a LARGE, furry black spider resting comfortably on the underside of the lid.  Thankfully I was armed with a steel hive tool and dispatched the menace quickly.  I really dislike spiders but I also know they do eat "bad" insects, so I try to leave them alone when I spot them in the garden.  But when they are around my bees I show now mercy!  I'm sure beekeepers in Arizona, Florida or Australia can get some really nasty surprises around their hives.  Yikes. 

Anyway, after all that drama, I pulled the SD memory card from the Arduino and downloaded the data.  My first disappointment was that it appeared that it only logged about 3 days worth of data.  It appears my 6 AA battery pack didn't last very long at all.  I'll be looking into an alternate power source for sure now.

Arduino Smart Hive data

With that said, it was cool to see that the general data collection does work!  From the data it looks like the external sensor might be a little flaky since the humidity spiked at 100% a number of times and the temperature measured at 103.82 F on June 2, 3:22 PM.  According to the weather report on that day, the highest it hit was 82 F.  Other than that oddity, the data looks consistent.  What I really like seeing are the readings from the brood area.  The temperature reading is a very flat, steady line, right around 95 F.  Despite what the outside temperature is, they do a fantastic job of maintaining the same temperature and humidity levels where the baby bees are being raised.

Pulling the first two frames from the hive, I saw they were still empty.  The third frame in was built much wider because of the empty space next to it.  With the top down view in the photo below, you can see how the wax sticks out past the top bar of frame 3.

Green Hive

Frame 3 was heavy with honey and frame 4 was the first to have brood on it.  Typically the brood nest is toward the middle of the hive so it was no surprise to see frame 5 had a lot of brood on it.  The other side of this frame had a large empty area where all the baby bees had already hatched out of their cells.

Hatched Brood

Frame 6 looked very similar to 5.  Frame 7 was about 50% covered with capped brood and had a large section of new wax drawn out.  Looking closely I could see there were eggs in almost every cell in the new section of wax.

Frame 7

Frame 8 and 9 actually had some large patches of brood on them with an empty queen cup as well.

Queen Cup

Thankfully there wasn't anything in the cup so it doesn't look like they are preparing to swarm or replace the queen.  The last frame hadn't really been touched by the bees since the last inspection.  So in total there are still 3 empty frames in Green Hive.  Looks like I'll be ready to add another box during my next inspection.  They are coming along nicely!

White Hive:

The first thing I noticed after removing the inner cover of White Hive was that I could see bees looking up from between almost every frame!  This hive in increasing in numbers more quickly than Green Hive for sure.

Looking into White Hive

The bees had stored quite a bit of nectar and pollen and the brood nest started a few frames in.  The queen in this hive knows how to lay some eggs!  Look at the photo below.  This frame is wall to wall brood with very few empty cells.  They will be bursting at the seems very soon.  I will need to add a second box for sure next week!

Lots of future bees

You can also see the patch of drone brood that was built along the bottom of this frame.  And speaking of drones, I was able to witness one being born.  Very cool!  You can watch the 30 second video here: http://youtu.be/X1rwGvIbuck

The last thing I did before concluding the inspection, was to change the entrance reducers on both hives from the small opening to the medium sized opening.  The population should be steadily increasing now on both hives so they should have no trouble defending a larger entrance.  This will also help alleviate any congestion as the foragers come and go all day long.

Looks like I have a lot to prepare for the next inspection.  New boxes to add and hopefully another way to power my Arduino.  So, until then thanks for reading!

First Inspection of the year : 2014-06-01

Twenty one days since I installed my two packages and I finally opened the hives up to take a look.  I should have done so much sooner but it sure seems like everything needs to be done all at the same time during the late spring.  It is always exciting to dive in and see what the girls have decided to do inside the hive despite the guidance the beekeeper has given them!  Bees don't read beekeeping books to figure out what they are suppose to do  =)

Green Hive:

The one nice thing about the inspections early in the year is that there aren't as many bees as there are during summer.  It makes it much easier to pull frames and move things around when there aren't bees covering everything.  You also don't need to use as much smoke since a few puffs can easily get most of the bees to move.  I was able to pull the first three frames quickly since the bees hadn't even touched them.  They are foundationless frames, so they are completely empty and the bees haven't thought about drawing out new comb on them yet.  I reached frame 4 and I could see the beginning of the honey and pollen storage. 

First inspection of Green Hive

Frame 5 had more pollen and honey and frame 6 was the first brood frame.  Interesting pattern on this frame with bits of pollen scattered among the brood cells.  About a third of the frame (on the right side of the photo) was all drone brood.

Brood frame

A little spotty so far but not something I'm too concerned about at this point.  It can be common in new queens.  I'm happy the queen is raising brood and she is fertile enough to have worker brood.  Next frame over was almost identical with drone on one side and worker brood on the other.  I spotted a queen cup but it was empty.  It is not uncommon to see queen cups.  The bees like to make them just in case they need them.  Frame 8 had some new, white comb drawn by the bees and they were starting to bridge it over into the next frame.  This is one of the struggles of letting the bees build their own comb.  They don't always build it in perfectly straight sections.  I cut some of the comb out and mashed some more together to try and make it straight.  I also swapped frame 9 with 8 in the hopes that they would make the small amount of comb there straight.  The last frame was empty. 

I did not spot the queen and I didn't specifically see any eggs but they seem to be going along pretty well.  As long as I see some new larva during my next inspection, I'll know the queen is still there.

So, besides doing my first inspection on Green Hive, I was also ready to deploy my Smart Hive Arduino system I have been working on.  It was a bit of a pain to run the one sensor through the inner cover without having someone to hold it but I was able to position it between frame 5 and 6.  Now I can only hope the bees don't chew through the wire insulation or decide to build bridge comb all around it and make a mess.  The second sensor goes out the side vent hole to measure the outside temp and humidity.  The third sensor rests near the Arduino in the vent board.

Arduino deployment

I'm looking forward to posting the first data points in my next blog entry!!

White Hive:

 The frames in the White Hive are fully drawn out plastic Honey Super Cell frames.  They fit much tighter in the box than the wooden frames in Green Hive do.  I have a "J-Hook" hive tool and it really helps to pull that first frame out.  A few bees danced across the frame I removed and I began to pull the second frame out.  For some reason, I did a mental double take and picked the first frame back off the ground where I had set it.  My eyes popped open when I realize there was the queen!!!  Running around on the frame with only a handful of other bees there!  Very unusual since the queen usually has a group of bees around her taking care of her needs at all time.  I quickly picked the frame up and hovered it back over the middle of the hive until I saw her walk off the frame and back down into the box.  That could have been bad if she had walked off into the grass or dirt somewhere!

The next two frames were empty like the first but on frame 4 I found the first scattering of brood.

Drone comb on plastic frames

On the bottom of this frame you can see that the bees decided to build some comb off of the bottom of the plastic frame.  Since the bees cannot enlarge the plastic cells, they have to build spots of comb with cells large enough for the queen to lay drones in. The next frame had a little brood on it and some nice colored pollen in the upper cells........plus the queen I almost squashed earlier!

Hi queenie!

Can you spot the queen the frame?  Starting from the middle bottom, about a third of the way up, just a bit to the right of center she sits in all her glory.  I pulled the next frame and was pleased to see it was solid brood!  A really nice pattern with very few cells still empty.  To my surprise, the next two frames were packed with brood too!  Wow!!  This queen is really a good egg layer.  I pulled frame 9 and it looked almost entirely empty until I held it up with the sun at my back.  When the light revealed the bottom of the cells, they were filled with tiny eggs.  This hive is going to be booming in a short period of time with this queen!

It is looking like a nice start to the 2014 beekeeping season.  The first new bees should start hatching any day now so the currently diminishing population of bees will make a nice turn the other direction building up to the hive's peak population in the summer.

Until the next inspection report, thanks for reading!

Hail Hail The Girls Are Here! : 2014-05-11

Let the 2014 beekeeping season begin!  Nothing like installing new packages of bees to remove a bit of the frustration from loosing the previous hives.  The new bees should have an even better start since I'm now able to use honey and drawn comb from the old hives.  No need to feed sugar this time!

Packages of bees waiting for their new home

Green and White hive were set up to make their encore performances.  I made a slight change this year and oriented them so they both face the same direction next to each other.

Ready to install

White hive is fitted with my fully drawn plastic Honey Supercell Frames.  Green Hive is starting with a number of drawn foundationless frames and a few that are empty foundationless frames.  My first year installing packages I sprayed them down with sugar water to keep the bees occupied with eating the sugar and it also serves to help clump them together.  This year with a little more experience under my belt and also from reading more from Michael Bush  http://www.bushfarms.com/beespackages.htm I decided not to do this and as my friend Scott says.......Release the Kraken!!  I removed the feeding can and the queen cage and after removing a few frames from the hive, I slammed the box on the ground and dumped the bees right in there!  I replaced the frames, removed the cork from the queen cages and wedged the queen cages between the frames.  I no time at all I had two newly installed hives.

Packages installed

I'm now praying for a fantastic 2014 season!  In a few days I will go back and make sure the queens have been released from their cages.  If not, I will then release them myself.  Next project after that is to turn one of the hives into my Arduino based smart hive!!  More on that when the time comes.  Until then, thanks for reading!

Winter Activites: 2013-01-29

Since winter time activities for beekeepers usually involve sitting around and worrying about their bees freezing, it is a good idea to find something else to do for the bees.  Well, I've been busy with three different bee related projects for this upcoming season!

Nuc Building:

A "nuc" is a nucleus hive.  It is a smaller version of a standard hive.  They have many uses such as swarm capture boxes, bait boxes, hive split boxes, etc.  So it is a good idea to have some on hand if necessary.  Using the plans by D Coates, I built four nuc boxes out of a sheet of 1/2" plywood.  With a few minor mistakes here and there and two days out in the pole barn, I have them complete!  It was also an excuse to use the new air compressor and staple gun I received for Christmas this year!

Four waiting to be painted

Yes, Frames do fit!

All I need to do now is paint them and drill an entrance hole.  Nice!

Wax Processing:


The second project I accomplished was to take the beeswax I had collected and melt it down into a manageable form.  I have two different wax molds (another Christmas gift), a 1 oz. and a 1 pound.  After using both, I decided I didn't really have enough wax to use the 1 pound mold, so I re-melted that one down and made it all into 1 oz. bars.

I'll be using the wax for making lip balm and coating any plastic foundation I have.  I don't think it is enough to make candles out of.  It seems like that would really take a lot of wax.

Smart Hive/Arduino Development:

Thanks to another Christmas gift (do you see a theme yet?), I have a plan to build a "Smart Hive".  Basically a hive that I can attach an electronic monitoring station to.  I would like it to measure temperature, humidity and hive weight throughout the year.  I could then collect the data and see some nice trends as the bee population increases and when the main nectar flows are in my area by watching weight spikes.  All of this is possible through a little device called Arduino.  An Arduino is an open source electronic board that you can attach various sensors to.  From the reading I have done it seems like the temperature and humidity sensors will be easy to configure.  The weight sensors seem to be a bigger issue.  Most electronic weight measurements are affected by temperature changes.  In an outdoor environment, the temperature will obvious change quite a bit.  Hopefully I'll be able to post more as my progress on the Smart Hive continues!

Arduino

Until next time, thanks for reading!