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Author Topic: Honey Bee Counter  (Read 9213 times)

Offline hydronics

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Honey Bee Counter
« on: June 13, 2012, 12:56:01 am »
Hi,

I wanted to share my honey bee counter... It counts bees as they leave and enter the hive.

*****I'll be at the mini-maker Faire in Eugene, Oregon this Saturday (6/16) if anyone is in the area and wants to check it out...
Also, our Portland Bee Keeper group is going to do a group build and sell a few with proceeds going to the Oregon State University Bee Lab... message me and I'll put you on the list....


Its so new I have no real data yet but I'll publish some information as it becomes available. I think I'll just use it from time to time to see the volume of bees entering and leaving. I'm a little concerned the 'gates' may keep the bees from cleaning out the hive... Any thoughts? cheers, -tom

Here is the website were you can review the design and build one yourself!

I'll have to wait to post until I get the administer to allow the links. -tom


http://www.instructables.com/id/Honey-Bee-Counter/


honey bee counter
« Last Edit: June 15, 2012, 04:00:57 am by hydronics »

Offline yockey5

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2012, 10:07:13 am »
So cool!

Offline Keskin

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #2 on: June 13, 2012, 05:39:07 pm »
I doubt IR sensors will work? They can capped with propolis.
How many times I’ve wonder
and it still comes out the same.
                                              Conway Twitty

No matter how you look at it or think of it
You see it’s life and we just got to play the game.
                                              Sam Moore

For curious people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAA_LUCb0QE&feature=related

Offline hardwood

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #3 on: June 13, 2012, 07:22:58 pm »
Now if you could figure a way to make them put a drop of honey into a jar before they can pass you'd make a fortune!

Scott
"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

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Offline BlueBee

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #4 on: June 13, 2012, 10:55:12 pm »
Keskin, IR might go through propolis, I don’t know.  Visible light would be a problem for sure.
 
Hydronics, I like your design.  Nice Job!  I have had a bee counter on my “to do” list for about a year now and never got to it.  I like your circuit design for differentiating bees that are exiting vs those that are returning.  How many mm of space is there between your IR LEDs and the Phototransistors?  It would really be cool to distinguish drones and the queen from the worker bees  :) 

Offline Blackwater Bee

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #5 on: June 14, 2012, 01:48:57 pm »




 :-D


Now if you could figure a way to make them put a drop of honey into a jar before they can pass you'd make a fortune!

Scott

Offline hydronics

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #6 on: June 15, 2012, 03:48:40 am »
How many mm of space is there between your IR LEDs and the Phototransistors?  It would really be cool to distinguish drones and the queen from the worker bees  :) 

The sensors are right on top of each other.... the board is almost 18mm wide... but the sensors are only ~7mm apart center to center.... differentiating between bees would be fun to try to design... potentially you could use the same sensor with a few extra components to provide a distance profile of the bee... kind of like scanning the top of the bee (bee passing under the sensor) and then using the different profiles to differentiate the types of bees check out the digital IR sensor board on the sparkfun website by searching digital QRE1113.. I don't have permission to provide links... pretty cool idea...

Offline AliciaH

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2012, 12:48:40 pm »
Very cool!

Offline AllenF

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #8 on: June 18, 2012, 02:51:10 pm »
That's cool.   Now can you get it to count SHB and moths also?   

Offline triple7sss

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #9 on: June 18, 2012, 07:03:01 pm »
That is a great idea and way cool!!

If we could just let the hive know when the "ins" and "outs" don't match at the end of the day then they could send out small search parties.  Or if more came in than went out they could a head count inside and see who wasn't supposed to be in there!

Offline edward

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #10 on: June 18, 2012, 08:36:06 pm »
cool  8-)

Offline hydronics

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #11 on: June 24, 2012, 04:12:40 am »
I've added some initial data... you can access the graphs from the original post above... cheers,


Offline hydronics

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #13 on: June 27, 2012, 03:14:57 pm »

Offline the-ecohouse.com

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #14 on: June 29, 2012, 09:52:47 am »
sign me up for one

Offline desarata

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Re: Honey Bee Counter
« Reply #15 on: July 29, 2012, 12:27:10 pm »
Please put me on the list for one