From Spacecraft to Beehives: Dan Seitz and ApisNode (402)

WEBVTT

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This is Dave Meister from Illinois and I just really enjoy the Beekeeping Today podcast and welcome to listen and get ready to learn.

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Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for

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Beekeeping news, information, and entertainment.

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I'm Jeff Ott.

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And I'm Becky Masterman.

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Today's episode is brought to you by the bee nutrition superheroes at Global Patties.

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Hey, a quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this.

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Be sure to check out all of our content on the website.

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There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations.

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About beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors.

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You can find it all at

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www.

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beekeepingtoday.

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com Thank you Dave Meister there in Illinois for that great opening recorded at the North American Honey Bee Expo in January.

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We're gonna be

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Right up next to Nobby again, and that's great.

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I love these openings.

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That was the North American, not the Midwest?

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North American.

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We're all out of the Midwest openers.

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We are.

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Okay.

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'Cause they're mighty close to that location in Illinois, so well fantastic.

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So basically these

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Openers are really expo openers.

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I think we could just rename them.

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You know, I'd be thrilled if someone would call in or leave an opening from our website.

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You know, on the lower right hand corner there's a microphone on the webpage at beekeepingtoday dot com.

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And if you just click on that button, you can record an opening.

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You can record a question.

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You can just record hey and say hi and say goodbye.

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But that possibility is there.

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So you just want that button used.

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You don't care how it's used.

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I'm lonely here.

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I just want to hear someone's voices.

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Oh boy.

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Yeah, that's sad here.

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Thank you, Dave, for that opening and thank you for everybody throughout this year who's gave us openers.

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From the different expos we've we've been at and uh even a couple conferences here and there.

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It really makes the show special, so that is nice.

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Becky, we have a listener question today.

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A HiveIQ listener question, Joe.

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A HiveIQ questioner.

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Folks, since last October, we've been running a promotion with one of our sponsors, HiveIQ, who is providing a beautiful

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shiny branded HiveIQ tool with our Beekeeping Today podcast brand on it.

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To listener who provides a question that we read and answer on the air, today we have a question from Brandon J.

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He sent it in through our website.

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Okay.

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You ready for this?

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I'm ready.

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I'm ready.

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Alright, so I'm gonna parse through this

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He says hi there, I'm a new beekeeper in the OSU master beekeeping program.

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I assume that is Ohio State University or Oregon State.

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Yeah, we don't know until we get this address.

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Brendan, let us know.

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He was wondering if he could make a frame similar to the Kenyan top-bar hive.

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They have a starter strip attached to the top bar.

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He writes, could I put a starter strip and a Langstroth frame and put some wire through it to help strengthen the comb as the bees build

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I'm not talking about wax foundation or plastic foundation.

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I want to put a starter strip at the top of the frame and let the bees build up comb through the entire frame however they would want to.

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Do you think this would work?

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Or do you think the bees would build some crazy comb?

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Question mark.

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That's a good question.

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It's a fun question because it's a really fun way to have the bees draw wax.

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sew or build comb.

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Have you done this?

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I have done this.

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I have done this a fair amount.

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When I was running bee Squad, we had a customer who did not want the plastic foundation.

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So I became

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pretty used to getting colonies started on just their own beeswax comb that they would draw on their own.

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And we used a beeswax starter strip.

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So we did take the

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the beeswax foundation and just a small, gosh that maybe a half inch strip at the top, and use beeswax to make sure that's it's held in there and put

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literally would start a colony on um a package colony.

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If it was just the weirdest thing to do, but start the package colony on ten frames.

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tightly pushed together with those starter strips and they drew beautiful comb.

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The warning is and that's all we did, there are some other methods out there where you use popsicle sticks for strength and things like that.

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But what you need to do

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You can you can do that if you want, but you can just have them start with the starter strip and then they build these beautiful combs, but you have to remember that they don't have reinforcement.

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So then when you're checking your colony

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instead of just flipping the comb up, you need to rotate the comb around so that the uh comb is never subject to gravity.

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And it's it's a skill that it was pretty easy to learn.

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And it's just that's the most important thing.

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The other thing that he will see is the bees will draw out a fair amount of drone comb.

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And so our trick there was to

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If we wanted to reduce the amount of drones that they were building, we would put those, rotate those drone frames to the outer edge, so that's where they would store honey and pollen.

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So very cool.

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It but it's so pretty.

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It's so pretty.

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And you have to feed 'em a lot.

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You have to make sure that they have a lot of syrup and a nectar flow is good.

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So this time of year wouldn't be good for it, but next spring and timing it with a nectar flow, it is so much fun.

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Did you

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insert the wire like Brandon suggest.

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No, okay, so you just did it freestyle.

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Easy peasy.

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And there like I said, there's some there's some you could do wire, you can do popsicle sticks, you can do uh things like that, but we found that it worked

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beautifully.

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And then the beauty of the whole process is that you just cut them out if you want to build like rotate out comb, you just cut it out and then you can have them start again and they will do it

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It's really rare that I find a colony that kind of is a crazy comb builder.

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I'm guessing that's kind of genetic, but I think most of the colonies that we've ever tried this with have just done a great job building

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Really perfect combs.

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Oh, very cool.

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I was always warned not to do that, but because they would build crazy comb, but and now I'm searching back through my memory.

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Which is a very short file case, let me tell you.

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I don't remember being told to use starter strips way back when.

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So th the thought was, you know, putting them just wooden frames and letting them build from that, which they of course would build it any which way they could.

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So I like that.

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Brendan, that's a great question.

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I'm glad you asked it.

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I think I'm gonna play with that next spring.

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I've often thought of doing it again, but it hasn't risen to the top of my list.

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Very good.

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Well thanks, Brendan.

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I don't have your mailing address, Brendan, so if you want to send it, that Postal Service would get you a brand new shiny HiveIQ tool, I'll get it in the mail for you.

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All right, coming up.

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Anybody who knows me and has been listening to the show long enough knows I really like technology in the hives and technology in the bee yard.

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Our next guest

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Daniel Seitz.

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Where is it?

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Seats?

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Seites?

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Seats?

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We're gonna find out.

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We're gonna find out.

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We're gonna talk to Daniel about his new company.

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And some of the new technology he's working on right after these words from our sponsors.

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For more than forty-five years, Betterbee has proudly supported beekeepers by offering high quality, innovative products, providing out

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Outstanding customer service, many of our staff are beekeepers themselves, and sharing education to help beekeepers succeed.

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Based in Greenwich, New York, Betterbee serves beekeepers all across the United States.

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States.

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Call 1-800-632-3379.

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Betterbee, your partners in Betterbeekeeping.

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Hey everybody, welcome back.

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Sitting around this great big virtual beekeeping today podcast interview table.

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We sitting down in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

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We have Daniel Seitz

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Becky's up in St.

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Paul, Minnesota, and I'm of course in Olympia, Washington.

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Daniel, welcome to the show.

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Yeah, glad to be here.

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Thanks for having me.

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And we're really excited that you could join us.

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Thank you.

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Anybody who's listened to the show anytime knows that I really like technology in the bee yard.

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I just mentioned that earlier, and I'm really looking forward to talking to you about your new product that you've been working on.

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But before we get into that

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Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into bees and then how you've incorporated your work into your bees and where we are today?

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Yeah, I live here in Los Alamos, Bomb City.

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I grew up here.

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Surrounded by technology and PhDs.

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I've spent my entire adult life here working for the laboratory.

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I'm an engineer.

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I work in the space sciences division, so my day job is designing and building spacecraft that go to either orbit the Earth or land on Mars or other places.

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Very cool.

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So

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uh life of technology, remote sensor development, things designed to survive in hostile environments, unattended, and also uh reliable

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Surprisingly, I was never interested in bees for many years until another engineer friend who has a farm down in the valley invited me to a honey harvest, me and my wife.

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We went down, it was great.

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Got a big old sticky mess with him and he tried to send us home with some bees and of course

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We we uh politely said no.

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It wasn't a lie, but it's uh it was an easy one as in Los Alamos we have a lot of bears up here.

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And I just couldn't think of a way to keep the bears out of the hives.

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So this went on for a couple of years.

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We go to the harvest, hew it off for bees.

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I would say no.

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And then finally he uh

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Went and saved a uh somewhat of a swarm or a neglected hive in another farm and said, I've got your bees for you, I'm coming over.

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And uh okay, so then I went uh tractor supply

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Did some research.

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It takes about a joule of energy to get a uh a bear to stop.

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So I bought a 30-mile fence energizer and used it for about 30 square feet of an apiary

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So it's a bit of a Fort Knox.

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I always tell people to stay a long ways away from the fence until I disarm it.

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But we've slowly grown the up apier up to four hives now.

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And we've never had a bear incident.

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Which is great.

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They come by, they just steer clear.

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And then the sensor development started pretty early

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I immediately was interested in, you know, what's going on in there.

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You can sit outside and drink your coffee and watch them come and go, which was great, but then you really wonder what's really happening.

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I did what most people probably do.

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You get out on the internet, you look for sensors and things, and I started with a very, very basic wireless temperature sensor for your home.

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I was immediately disappointed in the quality, both of the data and the repeatability and the frequency, all this stuff

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So then I upgraded slightly and I continued upgrading kind of COTS devices that were designed for more home use than anything, home automation.

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And still I just was not happy with many of the things.

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And then I decided to do what I do for a living is I went all in and started designing a sensor system from scratch.

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that would meet all the requirements I had personally said for myself around reliability and traceability and metrics that I could understand, metrics that I could use to do

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uh bit of citizen science and uh also compare against the white papers there's tremendous body of literature scientific literature on bees and

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Usually these are performed in a lab environment with undergrads and you know all sorts of work.

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So I was trying to replicate basically white paper-like hive monitoring uh in my backyard

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When you took a look at what was consumer available and said this just wasn't meeting the needs, was it from an accuracy standpoint or was it from a ease of use?

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I think it was all the above.

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Like even simple things like what is the frequency of the data collect?

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How often are you collecting data in the hive?

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And a lot of stuff it is based on temperature deltas.

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So once it reaches a delta, it'll report out a delta to you, which to me isn't that interesting because

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As I found out, bees are tremendous at regulating their environment, and I watched hives move by fractions of a degree over 24 hours, which was something I just couldn't even

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begin to measure using commercial devices.

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Daniel, will you share what a temperature delta is?

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Because Ah, sorry.

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Temperature delta would be a change in temperature

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That quantity.

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So if the bees are sitting at say 94 degrees and they move to 95 degrees, that's a delta of one degree.

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And typically commercial sensors will consider that not actually a change and they won't report it out.

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Because in your home, a one-degree change is not really significant.

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But for bees it's very significant as people have written about.

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The accuracy or the lack of variability of the temperature in the colony is pretty amazing.

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It's pretty consistent.

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Yeah, it's uh it's astounding.

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It's almost magic.

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You started looking at the temperature.

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What else intrigued you?

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What else did you want to start looking at?

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So temperature is great.

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You know, people know to look at temperature to track bee health.

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Uh it's like, okay, now humidity.

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So living in at 7,000 feet up here in New Mexico, we're

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regularly in single digit humidity for most of the year.

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It's like, okay, so what do the bees do?

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I put a humidity sensor in there.

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As it turns out, they also control humidity very tightly.

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Uh it can be 7% outside and it'll be sitting at 50% inside.

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So then you start thinking about, well, where's the water coming from and how much water does it actually take to make that climate happen inside the hive?

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And then of course I just couldn't help myself.

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So then the next thing was what's it sound like in there?

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People talk about, you know, sound and frequency bands and precursors and all that.

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So

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That was a whole nother journey picking a small MEMS, which is a microelectronics device that goes on a PCB.

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to record the sound inside the hive.

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You said PCB?

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Yes, sir.

00:16:12.980 --> 00:16:18.100
So uh all part of this was uh developed a custom PCB which is just a circuit board.

00:16:17.940 --> 00:16:19.620
So get the sound in there.

00:16:19.620 --> 00:16:24.900
And the first thing, you know, I wanted to track was just how noisy is it overall?

00:16:24.900 --> 00:16:27.300
And you could watch the hives through the day.

00:16:27.300 --> 00:16:30.660
They get they get louder during the day and quieter during the night.

00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:32.080
And that's interesting.

00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:39.920
But then you read the papers and you realize, well, there's actually these discrete frequency bands that bees use to communicate.

00:16:40.480 --> 00:16:46.960
They, you know, people heard of the waggle dance and queen piping and swarm indicators.

00:16:46.960 --> 00:16:52.720
Those are all very specific energy bands in frequency space that you can measure.

00:16:52.920 --> 00:16:57.240
So that I just replicated the white paperwork that all the great scientists have done.

00:16:57.240 --> 00:17:00.360
I started recording these discrete bands over time

00:17:00.740 --> 00:17:03.140
And say, Oh yeah, you know, these guys are right.

00:17:03.140 --> 00:17:04.660
This is real stuff.

00:17:04.660 --> 00:17:08.260
The bees really do talk and you can look at it

00:17:08.460 --> 00:17:13.020
And since I really couldn't stop at that point, I kept going.

00:17:13.020 --> 00:17:19.180
Because once you start reading the papers, there's been so many wonderful experiments done trying to

00:17:19.819 --> 00:17:22.300
figure out how bees communicate.

00:17:22.699 --> 00:17:24.620
It's very complex.

00:17:24.620 --> 00:17:30.060
You know, you think a hundred thousand living creatures all acting in unison.

00:17:30.580 --> 00:17:32.340
Is uh incredible.

00:17:32.340 --> 00:17:38.340
And how does that actually work, or how do we maybe gain insight into how that works?

00:17:38.340 --> 00:17:40.900
So the next step would be the vibration.

00:17:40.900 --> 00:17:41.140
So

00:17:41.740 --> 00:17:47.820
Again, great experiments have done been done where they embed accelerometers into honeycomb.

00:17:47.820 --> 00:17:50.860
And bees, the lower frequencies aren't audible.

00:17:50.860 --> 00:17:53.420
They're more vibrations in the honeycombs.

00:17:53.519 --> 00:18:00.320
The theory is that these are different versions of communication that communicate different things to the colony.

00:18:00.320 --> 00:18:07.760
We won't get into exactly what they all are, but so then, you know, develop the sensor to also sense all this.

00:18:07.620 --> 00:18:08.580
That's all great.

00:18:08.580 --> 00:18:11.860
So then I stopped there last winter.

00:18:11.860 --> 00:18:15.540
I let all the sensors ride through the winter, which was great

00:18:15.360 --> 00:18:16.880
I never opened 'em up once.

00:18:16.880 --> 00:18:18.480
I didn't have any colonies leave.

00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:21.039
I was actually kind of hoping that a colony would die.

00:18:21.039 --> 00:18:23.840
That sounds awful, but I wanted to see

00:18:24.160 --> 00:18:25.280
Well, what if there's a precursor?

00:18:26.480 --> 00:18:30.080
Yeah, it's uh yeah, I want to see the data, like what happens before they die.

00:18:30.080 --> 00:18:31.600
Is there a precursor?

00:18:31.600 --> 00:18:35.600
Some of the beekeepers I talk to, they say, yeah, one day the bees just left.

00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:36.880
And I was like, well that's weird.

00:18:36.880 --> 00:18:39.679
They all decided to leave, like why did they do that?

00:18:39.679 --> 00:18:43.760
So there's gotta be some form of communication to get them all to leave.

00:18:43.640 --> 00:18:50.200
in unison, but actually still waiting to capture a swarm or a hive absconding.

00:18:50.200 --> 00:18:51.480
Maybe I'm taking too good

00:18:51.560 --> 00:18:53.480
Of care of the bees because none of my bees have left.

00:18:53.880 --> 00:19:01.880
Well I'm sure that there'll be a lot of listeners, including myself, would be happy to put a sensor in my colony next spring because you'll hear a lot of swarming.

00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:03.680
Okay, that sounds great.

00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:06.560
Yeah, that's kind of the idea is let's do that.

00:19:06.560 --> 00:19:15.360
So then after the winter, I decided that I was gonna do one more rev of the custom hardware and the last thing I wanted to measure was the gas metrics in the hive.

00:19:15.220 --> 00:19:21.860
the volatile condensates, the you know the concentrations of various chemical compounds.

00:19:21.860 --> 00:19:27.620
So I uh also put in a gas sensor that analyzes

00:19:28.280 --> 00:19:32.520
Ten different steps of resistance on a hot plate.

00:19:32.520 --> 00:19:40.040
So to explain that a little more, the way the gas sensor works is that there's a very small piece of silicon on the board.

00:19:40.040 --> 00:19:45.320
like one millimeter by one millimeter with a heater on it that sits off ninety-nine percent of the time.

00:19:45.320 --> 00:19:52.200
When I turn it on, it steps through a temperature range and it and it measures the resistance of this piece of silicon

00:19:52.540 --> 00:20:01.260
As the temperature raises, the resistance changes as the volatiles are effectively burned off the silicon.

00:20:01.580 --> 00:20:13.419
So I can't tell you exactly what is getting burned off the sensor other than over the course of the summer I've I've developed kind of a gas fingerprint for a hive.

00:20:13.740 --> 00:20:16.059
All four of them are different.

00:20:15.519 --> 00:20:21.679
where they all have similar characteristics in gas, but they're all slightly different from each other.

00:20:21.679 --> 00:20:22.880
And you can see

00:20:23.419 --> 00:20:30.700
As they're starting to fan and cure honey, you get more volatiles coming off the honeycomb, and I can measure that somewhat indirectly.

00:20:30.700 --> 00:20:32.220
I can't tell you exactly.

00:20:32.440 --> 00:20:39.000
what the volatiles are, but I can see that they are in the hive and they're actively fanning and is leaving the hive.

00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:44.679
And you're saying you can't tell us it's because you don't know what they are, it's not because you're keeping secrets.

00:20:44.679 --> 00:20:45.559
Yeah, correct.

00:20:45.559 --> 00:20:45.880
So

00:20:45.800 --> 00:20:57.400
The way the way that these sensors are usually used is that I would take the same sensor, I would stick it in a bell jar, and I'd introduce, say, a couple micrograms of a known chemical.

00:20:57.360 --> 00:20:58.399
And then I'd measure it.

00:20:58.399 --> 00:21:00.159
So I'd have to do a baseline.

00:21:00.159 --> 00:21:12.159
That's kinda like the next big leap in science I'd have to do is I'd actually have to go procure these chemical compounds and do the testing in a controlled environment to get a calibration curve.

00:21:11.919 --> 00:21:13.600
That might happen later this year.

00:21:13.600 --> 00:21:14.720
I'm not sure.

00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:18.000
It's going to be a bit of a science project.

00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:24.320
And I think some of the chemicals are probably ones I don't want to handle in concentrated quantities

00:21:24.720 --> 00:21:35.360
But it's still it's informative because you can see, you know, when they're actively curing honey, which is kind of an indicator that there's active forage going on out there.

00:21:35.320 --> 00:21:42.520
You can see that also tracks with humidity as they bring water into the hive or any number of things.

00:21:42.600 --> 00:21:45.960
Wow, so you have one, two, three, four.

00:21:46.620 --> 00:21:51.820
Five different sensors, five different metrics you're measuring, or is it more?

00:21:51.820 --> 00:21:54.460
It's it's a little more, so it's you're correct.

00:21:54.460 --> 00:21:59.820
It's like five sensors, but if you think of the metric space, it's actually thirty

00:22:00.200 --> 00:22:07.880
So when I measure the sound, I'm not just measuring just sound on a microphone like we're speaking now.

00:22:07.880 --> 00:22:11.480
I'm measuring discrete frequency bands that are binned.

00:22:11.660 --> 00:22:17.980
So I'm doing ten of those and I'm doing ten gas metrics and ten vibration metrics.

00:22:17.980 --> 00:22:26.460
So it's it's not just as simple as how loud is the hive or how much is it shaking or what does it smell like.

00:22:26.380 --> 00:22:30.060
And all that combined is it's a lot of stuff to look at.

00:22:30.060 --> 00:22:35.020
So I realized very quickly that we live in the world of AI.

00:22:35.220 --> 00:22:37.460
And I wanted to put it to work.

00:22:37.460 --> 00:22:44.260
So I built the back end to run Amazon Web Services, which is kind of how the whole world works right now.

00:22:44.340 --> 00:22:48.900
I ship all the data off automatically from the hives to Amazon.

00:22:48.900 --> 00:22:54.900
I populate giant databases with it that's all tied to the person's uh user account.

00:22:55.019 --> 00:23:02.380
And then I run a uh an AI analysis once a day for people, or I tell AWS to do it.

00:23:02.380 --> 00:23:04.220
The AI is actually

00:23:05.060 --> 00:23:09.780
trained on all the scientific white papers that I could find on bees.

00:23:09.780 --> 00:23:12.500
So in ways I kind of built a

00:23:12.640 --> 00:23:18.400
a custom AI platform that's like the smartest beekeeper in the world according to itself.

00:23:22.240 --> 00:23:23.120
Oh yeah, yeah.

00:23:23.120 --> 00:23:24.240
We all know it.

00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:25.520
I love our theory.

00:23:25.520 --> 00:23:26.240
So then I

00:23:26.179 --> 00:23:34.260
I run all the data across this the world's smartest beekeeper, quote unquote, and have it give over time I've I've changed my tactic.

00:23:34.419 --> 00:23:38.100
First it was just a raw analysis of what it sees in the data.

00:23:37.960 --> 00:23:42.120
And I realize that's too much to think about for normal people, including me.

00:23:42.120 --> 00:23:50.680
So now I have it do uh diurnal analysis, so which is basically analyzing the high's day-night cycle

00:23:50.840 --> 00:23:55.000
for patterns that there's very obvious ones that you can find immediately.

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:58.039
And then I also looked for correlations.

00:23:58.039 --> 00:23:58.360
So

00:23:59.140 --> 00:24:00.340
I found it very useful.

00:24:00.340 --> 00:24:02.740
You can actually track your hives.

00:24:02.740 --> 00:24:06.260
You know, they're they're they have incredible clockwork.

00:24:06.260 --> 00:24:07.700
I don't know how they do it.

00:24:07.640 --> 00:24:14.440
But they wake up and they go to sleep at almost the every the same time every morning and night, at least for me.

00:24:14.440 --> 00:24:20.280
So when they start varying off that pattern, you also see other things change in the data

00:24:20.340 --> 00:24:24.980
And that's where the correlation analysis comes in where they're waking up later.

00:24:24.980 --> 00:24:26.500
We'll just use that as an example.

00:24:26.500 --> 00:24:28.820
Is there also a reduction in say

00:24:29.519 --> 00:24:34.080
vibration or sound, or is there less humidity, or is there more humidity?

00:24:34.080 --> 00:24:41.760
And it's kind of an attempt to correlate outside actions to what the hive has decided to do that day.

00:24:41.919 --> 00:24:48.640
Part of this is also all these metrics I described are also recorded in your Apiary through an outside unit.

00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:49.520
So I have

00:24:49.919 --> 00:24:57.039
a baseline of what your backyard looks like, and then I can compare what inside your hive looks like to that.

00:24:57.039 --> 00:24:57.360
So

00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:06.560
Yeah, gives you that baseline that, you know, if it's been consistently hotter, it would track that the bees are working harder to cool their hives.

00:25:06.540 --> 00:25:10.380
I have to admit, this is way too much for me to handle right now.

00:25:10.380 --> 00:25:11.420
Let's take a quick break.

00:25:11.420 --> 00:25:18.860
We'll hear from our sponsors, and we'll come back and we'll delve a little bit deeper into all of this because this is really striking a fancy for me.

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Strongmicrobials.

00:26:51.420 --> 00:26:54.380
com Welcome back everybody.

00:26:54.380 --> 00:26:58.780
I would just like to share a little behind the scenes at Beekeeping today

00:26:58.820 --> 00:27:05.860
Because both Jeff and Daniel have parrots and both parrots are communicating very

00:27:06.540 --> 00:27:09.180
consistently throughout this recording.

00:27:09.660 --> 00:27:15.340
So I'm hoping that Jeff leaves some of the parrot sounds in so that they can be part of the podcast.

00:27:15.340 --> 00:27:18.140
I don't think they can hear each other, but maybe they can.

00:27:18.140 --> 00:27:19.420
I don't know.

00:27:19.420 --> 00:27:21.260
Who knows?

00:27:20.400 --> 00:27:23.040
I'm used to Frisco, so I know what Frisco sounds like.

00:27:23.040 --> 00:27:24.640
Daniel, what's your parrot's name?

00:27:24.640 --> 00:27:25.520
Audasha.

00:27:25.520 --> 00:27:26.480
Adesha?

00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:27.280
Adesha.

00:27:27.280 --> 00:27:28.000
Adesha.

00:27:28.000 --> 00:27:29.280
So Adacia sounds beautiful.

00:27:29.520 --> 00:27:31.520
And she's a red eclectus?

00:27:31.100 --> 00:27:34.220
Yeah, a female look like just a beautiful bird.

00:27:34.220 --> 00:27:36.380
Okay, I have a non-parrot question.

00:27:36.539 --> 00:27:38.140
Back to bees.

00:27:40.400 --> 00:27:49.440
So I'm just really curious because I can see a lot of researchers getting pretty excited about what you're doing.

00:27:49.440 --> 00:27:49.760
And

00:27:50.160 --> 00:27:59.440
I thought specifically of there's a study out there that shows that the bees foraging changes the day before the weather changes.

00:27:59.440 --> 00:28:02.160
So the day before a rainstorm.

00:28:01.860 --> 00:28:03.779
they forage differently.

00:28:03.779 --> 00:28:12.340
And I'm wondering, have you started to connect some of your metrics to those kinds of studies?

00:28:12.460 --> 00:28:16.700
I've actually never looked directly at foraging based on weather.

00:28:17.020 --> 00:28:23.580
The sensors do record barometric pressure, so I could use that as an indicator of incoming weather.

00:28:23.640 --> 00:28:31.160
A very interesting one that came up, somewhat related, is that here in northern New Mexico we have a lot of wildfires, unfortunately.

00:28:31.160 --> 00:28:36.440
I noticed over the course of like three days that all the hive temperatures were getting depressed

00:28:36.519 --> 00:28:40.840
Basically they're about five degrees lower than they were the previous weeks.

00:28:41.080 --> 00:28:46.919
I started getting concerned that there's an apiary wide or an environmental factor going on here and I better

00:28:47.320 --> 00:28:48.760
Better do something about it, right?

00:28:48.760 --> 00:28:50.200
That's what you want to do.

00:28:50.200 --> 00:28:53.160
But then I realized it was actually the forest fire.

00:28:53.160 --> 00:28:58.120
So, you know, us beekeepers, we like smoke in our hives to get in there.

00:28:58.140 --> 00:29:03.260
And that elicits a very kind of primal urge to save themselves.

00:29:03.260 --> 00:29:07.420
They start gorging, they go in survival mode, right?

00:29:07.419 --> 00:29:17.179
So I eventually pieced it together using the gas analysis and then just looking out the window seeing the smoke that the hives were actually preparing to leave.

00:29:17.340 --> 00:29:19.660
They thought there was a fire coming.

00:29:19.660 --> 00:29:21.820
They stopped maintaining brood temperature.

00:29:21.820 --> 00:29:23.260
I could see that very clearly.

00:29:23.260 --> 00:29:26.620
And I could see the vibration patterns change significantly.

00:29:26.940 --> 00:29:35.580
Fortunately, the fire was put out and about two or three days later the bees decided not to leave and they went back to raising babies and

00:29:35.960 --> 00:29:37.320
Collecting nectar.

00:29:37.400 --> 00:29:40.760
How close was the fire to that apiary?

00:29:40.840 --> 00:29:45.480
Probably about ten miles as the crow flies.

00:29:45.480 --> 00:29:47.400
Is it a national forest?

00:29:47.340 --> 00:30:00.700
I know we get both well Minnesota wildfires but also we get smoke from Canada and it comes all the way down to the Twin Cities area but beekeepers have been really curious about how does that impact foraging

00:30:00.820 --> 00:30:06.420
And there are no, I think, studies out there that actually show that.

00:30:06.420 --> 00:30:10.820
So that's really interesting that you were able to see that impact.

00:30:11.140 --> 00:30:19.300
kind of in preparation for this conversation and just to you know a appraise w all I've done and what this is and what it isn't.

00:30:19.300 --> 00:30:22.500
I wrote a small article that's on the webpage.

00:30:22.500 --> 00:30:24.020
I'm sure you guys will provide a link.

00:30:24.020 --> 00:30:25.300
And it's basically

00:30:25.519 --> 00:30:37.840
My observations over the course of some period of time with these sensors, my B's, my location, and I even I wrote up and I showed the data from this forest fire event.

00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:42.559
Like real traces from the data and showing how the colonies reacted.

00:30:42.559 --> 00:30:46.400
And the whole paper was just kind of an honest evaluation of myself.

00:30:46.400 --> 00:30:48.080
So you gather all this data

00:30:48.100 --> 00:30:48.740
So what?

00:30:48.740 --> 00:30:50.179
I mean what are you gonna do with it?

00:30:50.179 --> 00:30:51.940
Is it meaningful in any way?

00:30:51.940 --> 00:30:52.900
And what do you do?

00:30:52.900 --> 00:30:57.299
Like do you run out there and like do something to the bees to save them?

00:30:57.360 --> 00:31:00.880
You know, that's really the crux of this whole thing, I think.

00:31:00.880 --> 00:31:07.840
Um I'm kind of a newcomer to the whole bees are dying, colony collapse disorder, all this stuff.

00:31:07.820 --> 00:31:10.300
The way I approach it is collect the data.

00:31:10.300 --> 00:31:15.260
I'm not trying to tell beekeepers they need to do anything to their hives.

00:31:15.260 --> 00:31:18.780
I'm just trying to collect as much data as possible.

00:31:18.760 --> 00:31:20.840
And then let them decide what to do with it.

00:31:20.840 --> 00:31:32.039
Because it really comes down to your local bees, your local environment, the way you like to keep your bees, your tactics, your procedures, all these kind of things.

00:31:32.040 --> 00:31:39.000
Just trying to get more information and then maybe a little more informed decision making.

00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:45.480
Unfortunately, heard stories from other beekeepers where they go in there with the best of intentions and they squash their queen

00:31:45.820 --> 00:31:47.820
You know, and I that happens, right?

00:31:47.820 --> 00:31:54.220
You go in there and these days I'm I'm almost I won't say I'm hands off.

00:31:54.220 --> 00:31:54.860
I'm very

00:31:55.320 --> 00:31:58.440
hands on with my hives, but I try to minimize.

00:31:58.440 --> 00:32:02.680
I try to minimize uh crack in the seal is what I say.

00:32:02.680 --> 00:32:08.520
Like when you do it, you're really it's it's really an invasion into their micro environment

00:32:08.460 --> 00:32:11.820
And I gotta believe that it affects them in some way.

00:32:11.820 --> 00:32:16.860
There was a couple interesting papers I've read where some folks actually

00:32:17.419 --> 00:32:23.580
found the boundary for some bees where they would actually leave after so many inspections and it was extreme.

00:32:23.580 --> 00:32:26.140
It was like get in there every day for a week.

00:32:26.140 --> 00:32:27.660
Well the bees are gonna leave.

00:32:27.660 --> 00:32:28.780
I mean they're not stupid.

00:32:28.780 --> 00:32:30.460
Something's wrong, they're gonna leave.

00:32:30.460 --> 00:32:30.780
So

00:32:31.220 --> 00:32:42.740
There's gotta be a balance between just our natural curiosity as beekeepers to get in there and you know just see the bees, which is an incredible thing to see, and just letting them be bees in there.

00:32:42.660 --> 00:32:44.660
It's a very fine line, I think.

00:32:44.740 --> 00:32:46.340
Is this a single sensor?

00:32:46.340 --> 00:32:49.300
It's collecting thirty different metrics at least.

00:32:49.300 --> 00:32:51.860
And you added maybe another one with the barometric pressure.

00:32:51.860 --> 00:32:53.700
But anyways, how big of a sensor is this?

00:32:53.700 --> 00:32:54.180
Is this

00:32:54.260 --> 00:32:57.860
Like another box you put on top of the colony or is this Oh no.

00:32:57.860 --> 00:33:02.900
It's a PCB that's approximately two inches by three inches.

00:33:02.900 --> 00:33:04.580
I designed the mount for it.

00:33:04.580 --> 00:33:05.860
I call it a dangler

00:33:06.160 --> 00:33:12.880
It's kind of a goofy name, but effectively it looks like a T shape and it just slides between two frames.

00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:19.040
So it's you know it's one bee space wide, which is like three-eighths of an inch or whatever you want to call it.

00:33:18.860 --> 00:33:21.419
So it just slides in between normal frames.

00:33:21.419 --> 00:33:23.740
Nothing, nothing fancy there.

00:33:23.740 --> 00:33:27.980
I always give them to people with a small solar panel.

00:33:27.980 --> 00:33:31.340
They do have batteries on them, so this comes down to data frequency.

00:33:31.340 --> 00:33:31.899
If you

00:33:32.500 --> 00:33:37.700
Are only interested in what your bees are doing once a day, you can just run the sensor off a battery.

00:33:37.700 --> 00:33:39.860
It'll last weeks and weeks and weeks, months.

00:33:39.860 --> 00:33:40.980
It just keeps going.

00:33:41.480 --> 00:33:42.840
Very low power thing.

00:33:42.840 --> 00:33:44.360
But I like lots of data.

00:33:44.360 --> 00:33:49.480
So my baseline that I set up for people is every five minutes the sensor wakes up.

00:33:49.620 --> 00:33:55.060
Collects all this data and ships it off to Amazon to be cataloged and analyzed.

00:33:55.060 --> 00:33:58.820
In doing that, the battery will last maybe about seven days.

00:33:59.120 --> 00:34:05.760
So you install the dangler and then I actually use a headphone cable like you'd use for headphones.

00:34:05.760 --> 00:34:07.200
That's the power cable.

00:34:07.260 --> 00:34:15.500
So you just plug that into the dangler, run it out of your hive, you can crush it between your boxes, it doesn't hurt it, and you just plug it into a USB solar panel and it

00:34:16.020 --> 00:34:17.700
Basically runs forever at that point.

00:34:18.020 --> 00:34:23.379
So did you design this for a two-deep configuration and to go into the bottom deep?

00:34:23.379 --> 00:34:26.579
I didn't design for any specific location other than

00:34:27.320 --> 00:34:30.040
I think the best place is in a brood box.

00:34:30.040 --> 00:34:31.320
But you could put it anywhere.

00:34:31.320 --> 00:34:36.760
I'd I haven't done it yet, but I'd like to for this winter I want to put one in every single box.

00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:39.800
One of the ones I'm gonna overwinter as an experiment is

00:34:40.040 --> 00:34:46.920
Three deeps all brewed that sounds really goofy with a super on top and I'm not I haven't touched that hive all year.

00:34:46.920 --> 00:34:48.760
I'm not gonna take the super off

00:34:48.800 --> 00:34:50.240
I'm not gonna harvest any honey.

00:34:50.240 --> 00:34:55.600
I'm not gonna open it other than to install a sensor in every single box before it gets cold.

00:34:55.600 --> 00:34:58.800
And I want to capture the bees moving up the hive.

00:34:58.800 --> 00:35:01.200
I mean everyone says they move up, right?

00:35:01.220 --> 00:35:10.900
I want to actually measure it and watch them move up through the hive through the wintertime, watch them do the thing that we all know they do, just for a data point.

00:35:11.020 --> 00:35:15.339
And then I also want to watch them redescend back to the bottom brood.

00:35:15.339 --> 00:35:17.260
I assume that's what they would do.

00:35:17.260 --> 00:35:20.619
Maybe they start making babies in the top box and move down.

00:35:20.900 --> 00:35:22.740
I actually don't know.

00:35:22.820 --> 00:35:26.020
Your third deep should be just pretty full of honey, actually.

00:35:26.020 --> 00:35:26.500
I would think that's a good thing.

00:35:26.820 --> 00:35:28.340
That's usually what happens.

00:35:28.340 --> 00:35:29.220
That's what happens.

00:35:29.220 --> 00:35:31.380
That's what happens in Minnesota.

00:35:31.720 --> 00:35:34.040
Dirt Deep gets real honey both.

00:35:34.440 --> 00:35:36.120
Yep, it's yeah.

00:35:36.120 --> 00:35:39.800
You probably don't need that super, but Yeah.

00:35:39.800 --> 00:35:41.240
Try an experiment.

00:35:41.400 --> 00:35:42.440
That's exciting.

00:35:42.460 --> 00:35:43.340
That's exciting.

00:35:43.340 --> 00:35:47.580
So it's a two inch by three inch dangler between the frames.

00:35:47.580 --> 00:35:55.900
You um put it maybe probably wherever you want, but I would assume center of the brood box would probably be ideal.

00:35:55.799 --> 00:36:01.799
One or maybe two per colony is what you have it configured currently, sort of.

00:36:02.119 --> 00:36:05.720
Power is a coin cell battery, I assume.

00:36:05.460 --> 00:36:08.180
It's actually a uh very small lithium pouch.

00:36:08.180 --> 00:36:15.460
It's uh 1000 milliamp hour, which is it's it's a very small lithium pouch, just so I get good energy density.

00:36:15.540 --> 00:36:17.060
That can be solar powered.

00:36:17.060 --> 00:36:18.420
Oh that's so cool.

00:36:18.420 --> 00:36:19.060
And then

00:36:19.720 --> 00:36:20.680
Communication.

00:36:20.680 --> 00:36:23.880
So how do you communicate with a dangler?

00:36:23.880 --> 00:36:25.160
How's that work?

00:36:25.240 --> 00:36:28.760
Another wonderful rabbit hole in technology.

00:36:28.760 --> 00:36:29.079
So

00:36:30.020 --> 00:36:38.420
You know, the home automation scene, they use a radio protocol called Zigbee, which was developed a long time ago.

00:36:38.440 --> 00:36:49.880
For basically low-power mesh network communication where you have these little sensors scattered around your house that live forever on a battery and relay like single bytes of data for long periods of time.

00:36:50.020 --> 00:36:50.980
Started with those.

00:36:50.980 --> 00:36:52.339
That was all last winter.

00:36:52.339 --> 00:36:53.619
Worked pretty well.

00:36:53.619 --> 00:36:59.460
But then I realized a lot of people don't have their apiaries like right next to their house.

00:36:59.460 --> 00:37:01.380
They're out back in the backyard.

00:37:01.380 --> 00:37:04.660
They're wherever on some random field somewhere.

00:37:04.839 --> 00:37:09.800
So I pivoted to a technology called LoRa, L-O-R-A.

00:37:09.800 --> 00:37:13.079
It's a long-range radio communication

00:37:13.620 --> 00:37:16.740
standard that's been developed over the past couple of years.

00:37:16.740 --> 00:37:21.540
The commercial product you usually hear people talk about these days is called Meshtastic.

00:37:22.060 --> 00:37:32.940
which is kind of an underground movement to make solar powered radio networks across the world for like emergency text messaging activities or emergency response.

00:37:32.940 --> 00:37:35.980
So basically I took the same radio technology

00:37:36.120 --> 00:37:44.040
And I wrote my own version of software for it that allows the beekeeper to have that same long-range radio in their hive.

00:37:44.320 --> 00:37:50.080
and let their hive be, you know, up to a mile under cer certain circumstances from their home.

00:37:50.080 --> 00:37:51.360
Which is kinda nice.

00:37:51.360 --> 00:37:58.960
Have sent kits out to a gentleman up in Montana and his hives are further out from his house than most.

00:37:58.520 --> 00:38:04.200
And it allowed him to, you know, monitor his hives where he didn't need to bring a Wi-Fi hub out there.

00:38:04.200 --> 00:38:06.359
He didn't have to bring power out there.

00:38:06.359 --> 00:38:09.320
He basically just relies on my low power radio.

00:38:09.559 --> 00:38:22.279
to get it back to his house and then the base station, which is actually the exact same board that's in the uh in the hive, to receive that data packet and then get on your Wi-Fi at your house.

00:38:22.160 --> 00:38:24.480
and upload it all to Amazon.

00:38:24.560 --> 00:38:26.480
Amazon Web Services.

00:38:26.480 --> 00:38:31.680
So do you have an alternative if you don't keep your bees anywhere near your house?

00:38:31.460 --> 00:38:39.620
You can always do the super remote thing, which is have something there to talk to a cell phone or a Starlink.

00:38:39.620 --> 00:38:44.500
Or any of the other super remote means that people use these days.

00:38:44.500 --> 00:38:52.420
Right now it's centered around the hives are within one to two miles of your house, and at your house you have Wi-Fi.

00:38:52.900 --> 00:39:04.260
There's nothing to say that your house could be replaced with a Starlink dish or a Verizon router or any number of other more long-range backhauls.

00:39:04.320 --> 00:39:10.720
You have this environment, you have this network monitoring your colony, monitoring your hives.

00:39:10.720 --> 00:39:13.120
You approach this subject a little bit

00:39:13.240 --> 00:39:15.480
But how do you pull it all in together?

00:39:15.480 --> 00:39:21.880
What's your dashboard into your colony and is see what your hive is doing, what your colony is doing?

00:39:21.880 --> 00:39:23.480
That's also evolved over time.

00:39:23.480 --> 00:39:26.440
There is a an iPhone and an Android app

00:39:26.540 --> 00:39:27.420
That I give people.

00:39:27.420 --> 00:39:28.460
It's free.

00:39:28.460 --> 00:39:35.100
With that, you can look at any number of your hives from any anywhere in the world on your cell phone like you would a normal app.

00:39:34.940 --> 00:39:36.220
You just log in.

00:39:36.220 --> 00:39:40.380
It since it's all on Amazon Web Services, you're actually talking to Amazon.

00:39:40.380 --> 00:39:42.220
You're not talking to anything I own.

00:39:42.220 --> 00:39:44.700
I don't manage any of this stuff directly.

00:39:44.500 --> 00:39:47.780
You have a username, a password, again, all managed by Amazon.

00:39:47.780 --> 00:39:50.020
You can see it from your cell phone.

00:39:50.020 --> 00:39:51.700
That's pretty that's pretty neat.

00:39:51.700 --> 00:39:52.660
You can see all the data.

00:39:52.660 --> 00:39:54.820
You can do the AI analysis.

00:39:54.840 --> 00:40:00.040
The third part I haven't talked about yet, which I almost forgot was on the app.

00:40:00.040 --> 00:40:04.280
You know, I talked about the world's smartest beekeeper, which is this AI.

00:40:04.359 --> 00:40:10.760
You know, AIs are great at thinking they're smart, but you know, we've all used them and we know their limitations.

00:40:10.760 --> 00:40:15.160
So I decided earlier this year is that part of this whole thing is

00:40:15.440 --> 00:40:21.680
you need to actually add in like the beekeeper's experience into this whole loop.

00:40:21.680 --> 00:40:29.359
Like any one of us have observations just walking out to the apiary, the AI will never experience.

00:40:29.359 --> 00:40:29.680
So

00:40:30.120 --> 00:40:34.040
Part of the app on your phone is that you do a hive inspection.

00:40:34.040 --> 00:40:40.040
And it's like when you go to the doctor now and they set down their phone and they hit record and you just chat them up.

00:40:40.040 --> 00:40:40.680
It's the same thing.

00:40:40.680 --> 00:40:42.440
You show up to the apiary.

00:40:42.440 --> 00:40:49.720
You click on the hive that you're working on, you hit record or inspect, and it just records your voice and you just kind of talk to yourself the whole time.

00:40:49.720 --> 00:40:50.839
You can mumble.

00:40:50.960 --> 00:40:53.360
You can talk about things that have nothing to do with bees.

00:40:53.360 --> 00:40:54.480
It doesn't matter.

00:40:54.480 --> 00:41:00.080
And when you're done with that hive, if you hit stop record, it sends all that up to Amazon.

00:41:00.080 --> 00:41:02.000
It gets transcribed.

00:41:02.000 --> 00:41:05.040
And then that's part of the injection into the AI is that

00:41:05.520 --> 00:41:10.960
I've told it, you know, the order of precedence in your analysis is the beekeepers first.

00:41:10.960 --> 00:41:13.920
If you or I says say that

00:41:14.240 --> 00:41:18.800
I see swarm cells, that should be addressed right up front by the AI.

00:41:18.800 --> 00:41:21.120
And then that's the baseline truth.

00:41:21.120 --> 00:41:24.480
That's the actual reality of what's going on in the hive.

00:41:24.440 --> 00:41:30.440
And without that, the AIs, they hallucinate, they invent things, they become less useful.

00:41:30.440 --> 00:41:39.160
So it's a long way of saying you need to have the beekeepers actual insights in there that's actually telling the AI reality.

00:41:38.940 --> 00:41:42.619
The next form of interaction with your hives would be just a website.

00:41:42.619 --> 00:41:46.700
I found that most of us live in front of computers most of the day

00:41:46.820 --> 00:41:51.380
And wouldn't it be nice just to have a website where I could log in and look at my bees all day, every day?

00:41:51.380 --> 00:41:56.020
People like watching live cams, they like watching whatever, right?

00:41:56.020 --> 00:41:57.060
YouTube videos.

00:41:57.060 --> 00:42:00.500
So there's a website, you log in with your username and password

00:42:00.640 --> 00:42:12.079
You have access to all your hive's data, all the metrics, the graphs, the analysis, and then I also added in a chat feature where you look at all this stuff and you're confused.

00:42:12.079 --> 00:42:15.039
You're like, what in the heck does all this mean?

00:42:15.020 --> 00:42:23.660
There's just a chat box that gives you direct access to your full database of all your data, all your hive's history.

00:42:23.720 --> 00:42:31.000
And all the knowledge the AI has gathered, and you can just chat with the AI about your personal apiary.

00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:35.400
You can say, hey, what happened on last Tuesday at three o'clock?

00:42:35.480 --> 00:42:36.200
It looks like

00:42:36.540 --> 00:42:40.700
You know, the temperature spiked or the sound did this or the vibration did that.

00:42:40.700 --> 00:42:45.260
It'll go into your database, it'll find that date, it'll find those data records.

00:42:45.340 --> 00:42:51.740
And then it will attempt to form a story around what might have happened at that date and time.

00:42:51.740 --> 00:42:57.340
Or you can ask it general things like, do you think my hive's gonna swarm?

00:42:57.059 --> 00:43:00.260
And then it'll give you its best guess.

00:43:00.420 --> 00:43:04.420
How many colonies in an apiary did you envision this working for?

00:43:04.420 --> 00:43:05.539
So if somebody has

00:43:05.920 --> 00:43:13.840
fifteen colonies in their apiaryA or thirty colonies in an apiaryA, where do you see this technology fitting into that?

00:43:13.840 --> 00:43:15.120
scale of beekeeper.

00:43:15.440 --> 00:43:18.880
I would love to see it in very large apiaries.

00:43:18.880 --> 00:43:26.320
The ones that are super dense, lots of bees, maybe even different uh configurations of hives.

00:43:26.420 --> 00:43:28.980
Commercial production is an interesting thing.

00:43:28.980 --> 00:43:33.140
There really is no limit to the technology, how many you could put in an apiary.

00:43:33.140 --> 00:43:34.660
It's just a matter of

00:43:35.040 --> 00:43:40.480
uh getting that many boards to the end user and then you know getting it all set up effectively.

00:43:40.480 --> 00:43:48.160
30 hives would be much more of a burden in terms of like actually opening them all, inserting all the sensors.

00:43:48.059 --> 00:43:54.380
You know, it'll take more work, but the way it's designed, hopefully it's just a one-time effort.

00:43:54.380 --> 00:43:57.339
And then you just kind of leave them in your hive forever.

00:43:57.339 --> 00:44:00.460
I guess one other thing I haven't brought up yet is I

00:44:01.020 --> 00:44:08.540
I had this other kind of it's not really a novel thought, but you know, if we're gathering all this data

00:44:09.220 --> 00:44:12.660
It's kind of like, you know, just the beekeeping community.

00:44:12.660 --> 00:44:17.539
Wouldn't it be great if all this data was available to everybody?

00:44:17.539 --> 00:44:17.859
So

00:44:18.880 --> 00:44:23.359
Part of signing up to get these kits right now, they're actually free.

00:44:23.359 --> 00:44:31.039
Uh I make people fill out applications and I usually talk to them on the phone to make sure they're they're actually interested in gathering scientific data, not just

00:44:31.340 --> 00:44:34.460
a widget, like get on board with the project.

00:44:34.460 --> 00:44:38.300
And then uh part of that is you agree to releasing all your data.

00:44:38.300 --> 00:44:39.420
It'll be anonymized.

00:44:39.420 --> 00:44:44.620
It's not identifiable by a person to what I'm calling the Open Apiary project, which is

00:44:45.320 --> 00:44:52.920
It's a big stretch, but I'm trying to make the world's largest open database of consistent bee data

00:44:53.140 --> 00:44:54.500
If that makes sense.

00:44:54.500 --> 00:45:00.740
So all this data I'm gathering is all being uh anonymized and aggregated

00:45:01.460 --> 00:45:07.700
and presented or available to anyone at any time for free to do their own research on the data.

00:45:07.700 --> 00:45:10.980
If it's someone gets really interested in some

00:45:12.080 --> 00:45:22.160
giant uh collapse thing that happened somewhere in the country or world and I happen to have sensors somewhere in that region, they can have all that data for free.

00:45:22.380 --> 00:45:32.619
And the hope is that if we collect enough data for enough time on enough hives and enough locations, maybe we can start to figure some things out we haven't learned yet.

00:45:32.460 --> 00:45:39.420
I don't know if that's true, but I know we will not figure it out unless we have some kind of consistent data.

00:45:39.420 --> 00:45:42.380
You know, the beekeepers were all great.

00:45:42.420 --> 00:45:55.220
But we all think about it differently and we do different treatments, we do different tactics, and without the consistency, it's it's hard to unconfound like the results of what actually is happening.

00:45:55.240 --> 00:45:57.400
And that to me is the hardest part.

00:45:57.800 --> 00:46:06.200
Do you want to input that information through that inspection and that recorded hive inspection information and then

00:46:06.799 --> 00:46:14.240
Is it that powerful that it can note that point in time where, oh, I've got chalkbrood in the colony, or oh

00:46:14.359 --> 00:46:17.960
I just did a mite test and I've got, you know, 4% mite, something like that.

00:46:17.960 --> 00:46:21.240
Is that is that what you're thinking as far as that information?

00:46:21.640 --> 00:46:23.880
Yeah, that is that's gold.

00:46:23.880 --> 00:46:24.920
I mean that is

00:46:25.520 --> 00:46:34.320
That is the stuff I'm after, is the the anomalies or the problems or the issues that you encounter in the hives.

00:46:34.320 --> 00:46:36.880
And then trying to correlate that to real

00:46:37.540 --> 00:46:40.180
kind of baseline data metrics.

00:46:40.180 --> 00:46:46.580
It won't guarantee that, you know, the fingerprint that I can sense when you make that inspection is always going to be

00:46:47.040 --> 00:46:54.720
like chalkbrood or something, but if enough of us report infestation and enough of us have data that

00:46:54.920 --> 00:46:58.760
seems to compare in all in a major kind of way.

00:46:58.760 --> 00:47:06.840
Maybe we can start saying that we can either see early onset of these diseases or these infestations, or we can

00:47:07.120 --> 00:47:20.240
actually watch colonies like that give mites, maybe over time we can watch it evolve from infestation to regulation and then back down to somehow the bees have taken care of it.

00:47:20.160 --> 00:47:28.000
And that would be interesting to see it slowly develop and see how the bees respond to and I was just thinking about the in the in the southeast where they haven't

00:47:28.160 --> 00:47:30.480
you know, they just declared this last summer.

00:47:30.480 --> 00:47:39.040
The uh yellow legged hornet has actually landed, it's it's embedded in the States and the sea a normal colony and then

00:47:39.359 --> 00:47:43.440
A day later the yellow legged hornets show up and you can see the difference in the hive.

00:47:43.440 --> 00:47:45.119
And I imagine the same thing.

00:47:45.119 --> 00:47:54.160
At what point does chalkbrood become a problem for the hive and you start noticing the difference as opposed to here and there outbreaks?

00:47:54.099 --> 00:47:59.940
You know, I mean we all know bees have been around a very long time and they can definitely take care of themselves.

00:47:59.940 --> 00:48:01.300
They've proven that

00:48:02.080 --> 00:48:05.120
But there's strange new things happening.

00:48:05.120 --> 00:48:12.720
They're encountering chemicals and environments they've never been exposed to, new species of animals, insects.

00:48:12.660 --> 00:48:17.860
I mean the world's a much different place and it's changed a lot even in the last hundred years.

00:48:17.860 --> 00:48:23.060
So who knows what they're experiencing and how they're gonna deal with it?

00:48:22.859 --> 00:48:25.660
I have to go back to volatiles and y and you just said it.

00:48:25.660 --> 00:48:27.099
You said chemicals.

00:48:27.099 --> 00:48:36.780
Were you thinking when you are looking to measure volatiles, were you thinking of the pesticides that might come in on the pollen or go through

00:48:36.760 --> 00:48:39.720
Hopefully not, but the nectar, are you thinking about that?

00:48:39.720 --> 00:48:43.240
Is that was that one of your reasons to look at volatiles?

00:48:43.320 --> 00:48:44.040
Absolutely.

00:48:44.040 --> 00:48:44.360
Yeah.

00:48:44.360 --> 00:48:45.000
It's uh

00:48:45.520 --> 00:48:51.359
You know, you hear people that you know they're speculating that a neighbor sprayed for bees and now all their bees are dead.

00:48:51.359 --> 00:48:53.040
There's probably a lot of truth to that

00:48:53.240 --> 00:49:01.480
But if you could actually capture and see that yes, the bees introduced a new volatile to the colony and three days later all the bees were dead.

00:49:01.660 --> 00:49:03.740
That's some interesting information.

00:49:03.740 --> 00:49:10.460
Right now, the way I have the gas sensor set up is doing a range of temperatures, ten different steps.

00:49:10.460 --> 00:49:11.340
I can't

00:49:11.799 --> 00:49:18.760
claim that those ten steps will capture a specific chemical compound, but it was a place to start.

00:49:18.760 --> 00:49:20.680
And it was kind of informed by

00:49:21.240 --> 00:49:33.000
the white papers, the scientists that had kind of done similar things, but they're more interested in, you know, honey curing and pheromones and whatnot that are in the uh healthy colony

00:49:33.660 --> 00:49:36.940
So there's nothing saying it couldn't be expanded.

00:49:36.940 --> 00:49:38.780
So it'd be a science experiment.

00:49:38.780 --> 00:49:43.340
I would go by, you know, bee-killer pesticide.

00:49:43.420 --> 00:49:51.340
and introduce it to a bell jar and I'd measure it with my sensor and see, you know, at what temperature I could maybe detect this stuff.

00:49:51.340 --> 00:49:54.860
And then I just add that to the list of measurements I would make.

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:57.800
It's kind of the progression.

00:50:00.440 --> 00:50:05.720
It'd be really interesting to have beekeeper's note entombed pollen and chlorothalonil.

00:50:05.760 --> 00:50:15.120
fungicide that would be because that's something you can actually see in the colony and there's a high likelihood that if you see entombed pollen it does have that fungicide.

00:50:15.560 --> 00:50:16.840
So I'll send you things.

00:50:18.600 --> 00:50:20.600
Yeah, maybe that should be our first thing.

00:50:27.260 --> 00:50:29.260
I see it in brand new colonies sometimes.

00:50:29.260 --> 00:50:33.900
So it's it's definitely s something and it's a risk factor for death.

00:50:33.900 --> 00:50:37.420
So it's it kind of hits every uh checks every body.

00:50:39.820 --> 00:50:49.420
kind of first targeted analysis tool is detecting something like that, like a specific thing that people see and can verify.

00:50:49.760 --> 00:50:59.520
Daniel, this has been really, really fun and I look forward to learning more as you find more ways to use the ApisNode sensors.

00:50:59.620 --> 00:51:03.460
Where can people find out more information about what you're doing?

00:51:03.540 --> 00:51:04.660
ApisNode.

00:51:04.660 --> 00:51:07.300
com, APIsno-d-e.

00:51:07.300 --> 00:51:08.020
com.

00:51:08.020 --> 00:51:12.500
And if you're interested in Open Apiary, that's openapiary.

00:51:12.500 --> 00:51:13.380
org.

00:51:13.400 --> 00:51:17.800
And yeah, and if you'd like, go ahead and fill an application.

00:51:17.800 --> 00:51:21.080
I'll uh I'll receive it and then expect a phone call.

00:51:21.080 --> 00:51:23.160
I'd like to talk to you about it.

00:51:23.099 --> 00:51:27.420
And uh then I'll send you a kit out, free of charge, no shipping, nothing.

00:51:27.420 --> 00:51:30.859
All you gotta do is agree to collect good data

00:51:30.920 --> 00:51:32.520
That's amazing.

00:51:32.520 --> 00:51:34.760
We are out of time, but I want to thank you so much.

00:51:34.760 --> 00:51:40.200
I look forward to learning more and if you would or be so willing, we'd like to have you back.

00:51:40.160 --> 00:51:42.240
and several months to find out how things are going.

00:51:42.240 --> 00:51:44.640
Maybe after the winter and into the spring.

00:51:44.640 --> 00:51:48.160
Several months I bet you're gonna get invited back next month, Daniel.

00:51:48.160 --> 00:51:49.760
Yeah that's Yeah.

00:51:49.760 --> 00:51:51.200
I'm happy to talk anytime.

00:51:51.200 --> 00:51:54.800
As you can tell I get a little excited about it.

00:51:55.800 --> 00:51:59.560
Wow, can you imagine that from spaceships to hives?

00:51:59.560 --> 00:52:01.800
I mean, that's fantastic.

00:52:01.800 --> 00:52:04.680
I might have enjoyed that more than you did, actually.

00:52:04.680 --> 00:52:04.920
I

00:52:05.460 --> 00:52:08.180
Well, I'm sure you enjoyed it immensely.

00:52:08.180 --> 00:52:13.300
I was so impressed with the full circle of the technology.

00:52:13.300 --> 00:52:16.180
And I think we just talked to the future.

00:52:15.960 --> 00:52:18.120
Pulling it all together is really, really cool.

00:52:18.120 --> 00:52:21.400
And I was surprised that I had to compete for questions.

00:52:21.400 --> 00:52:21.880
I figured

00:52:22.200 --> 00:52:24.200
I know, I apologize for that job.

00:52:24.200 --> 00:52:30.040
I figured I would I had a list of questions here ready to go, but I didn't even go to it because

00:52:30.520 --> 00:52:32.040
You were right there.

00:52:32.040 --> 00:52:32.839
I know.

00:52:32.839 --> 00:52:42.599
I really thought I was gonna sit back and I think maybe phone this one in was something I was I was going to do, but boy, oh boy, that was

00:52:43.020 --> 00:52:44.300
So fantastic.

00:52:44.300 --> 00:52:57.180
So if anyone's interested at all in technology in the bee yard and technology in your hives and an understanding what's happening in your hive, I encourage you to go out to the ApisNode website, look at what Daniel's doing, and if

00:52:57.700 --> 00:53:03.460
If you're so inclined, reach out to them and maybe you can be part of the project there.

00:53:03.700 --> 00:53:07.700
And that about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today.

00:53:07.700 --> 00:53:12.579
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00:53:12.940 --> 00:53:15.260
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00:53:40.900 --> 00:53:42.660
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00:53:43.020 --> 00:53:44.859
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00:53:44.859 --> 00:53:49.260
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00:53:50.619 --> 00:53:52.300
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