Hi Everyone,
I thought I'd put this out into the forum and get some feedback and suggestions from many of you seasoned swarm collectors.
Being in the IT industry and a keen beekeeper, I had some experience this year with collecting a few swarms. I felt that we could utilise the latest available technology and make it a lot easier for the general public to report a swarm and get it collected by beekeepers rather than having them killed by pest control companies.
I am building a specialised web site to cater just for this. I have many ideas that I'll incorporate into the web site but I would like to hear from the community of what they would like to see in it and the functionality they would like to have. Based on your experiences please tell me what is important for you as far as information, notification etc etc.
I see this as eventually giving the community some very accurate data on where and when swarms occur, how many and any other information you feel is important to collect related to swarms and then provide feedback to the beekeeping community. There are some very good sites with lots of beekeeper contacts but that is where it stops. Hopefully this new site, with your interaction, will gather some very good empirical data which in the current "bee survival crisis" could be extremely useful for the future.
Please feel free to give me your suggestions no matter how trivial they may seem to you and I'll see if we can incorporate them in this hopefully very interactive site.
I look forward to your responses and will keep you informed of the progress.