Time lapse photos of an observation hive

[wfarler]

I want to do time lapse photos of an observation hive to track egg laying and emergence and development.

1. is it practical? will there be too many bees obscuring the comb to track egg and larvae development

2. any ideas how to rig up a digital camera to do something like this?

Thx.

[drobbins]

wfarler

I've thought about the same thing
it's real easy
they make what are called "web cams" for under $100
most come with software to let you point them at, say, a childs room
then you can set it to take a picture at any interval you want
it will do whatever you want with the picture
usually you send em to a webserver so you can monitor the child from work
folks use em for home security etc
should work great

Dave

I just looked at bestbuy
if you get one make sure it will take higher resolution pictures if you do stills instead of video
this looks good

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=4769879&type=product&id=1051384555363

[ March 03, 2006, 05:59 PM: Message edited by: drobbins ]

[Michael Bush]

Egg laying is the part that happens the quickest. Capping takes some time. Emergence takes some time. Time lapse should work fine for those. How will you map a particular cell? I suppose if the camera is stationary enough you should be able to.

Sounds like a wonderful project. Especially if you can do it on some large and small cells. smile.gif

[wfarler]

My hypothesis is that bee development time is influenced by cell size and by genetics.

1) I would like to see how long the development time on the offspring of my queen lines are. So this idea was to test their emergence time
2) Then I would like to alternately place the same strain on large and small foundation to see how much if any difference it makes. Possibly mix fixed size comb side by side to gain more control for environmental factors.

Trying to see how much of it is due to the strain and how much is due to the cell size or if there is a synergy between the two.

[wfarler]

Any ideas on how to get the bees to scatter to off the frame before the camera goes off? Would they run from a bright light if the rest of the observation hive is dark?

[Jim Fischer]

A puff of air will cause bees to scatter, so
one could drill some small holes (or use 8-mesh
rather than plastic or glass for the glazing)
and use a compressed air can, as long as one
used a gentle pressure on the trigger and a
long straw to avoid spraying the bees with COOOLD air.

[FordGuy]

just wondering where they would scatter to? I thought those OH were fairly tight.

[Michael Bush]

>My hypothesis is that bee development time is influenced by cell size and by genetics.

Harbo's theory is it's genetics. Dee Lusby's theory is it's cell size. My observation is it's cell size. I don't know about the genetics.

>Possibly mix fixed size comb side by side to gain more control for environmental factors.

That will work fine and will be the least other variables.

>Any ideas on how to get the bees to scatter to off the frame before the camera goes off?

Not really.

>Would they run from a bright light if the rest of the observation hive is dark?

No. I have tried bright lights and it does not work to get them to move.

Huber used a 1 1/2" thick observation hive. This limits the bees to one layer of bees thick. I've used 1 1/2" hives and it works IF the bees draw the comb in the hive. It doesn't work well if you try to take combs from a hive and put them in because it's so tight that any iregularity in the comb causes problems. With only one bee thick you can see much better what's going on.

>A puff of air will cause bees to scatter, so
one could drill some small holes (or use 8-mesh
rather than plastic or glass for the glazing)
and use a compressed air can, as long as one
used a gentle pressure on the trigger and a
long straw to avoid spraying the bees with COOOLD air.

That's got potential.

>just wondering where they would scatter to?

There is always room to move. If there wasn't they would have swarmed already. smile.gif

[Michael Bush]

wfarler,

Did you get the time lapse thing to work? Just curious.

[wayacoyote]

Thanks for the bump here, Michael. I've wondered about the way of doing this too since the SC timing issue came up last year. I'm definately going to try it when I get set up. Seems that a patch of comb could be set up somehow to induce the queen to lay in it within the camera's time frame using constant recording. Once she is caught laying, then the time-laps technique could be used considering that one Should have the window down to within the couple of days each following stage should occur.

I'm still interested in timelapse with the still camera since I'd be interested in doing this in other applications away from a computer (ie, bat house, bird nest, deer field).